SD 118 
.T7 
Copy 1 




rhe Tri-State Forestry 
Conference 



Ohio, Illinois and Indiana 

October 22 and 23, 1919 



Manafement of 

The Department of Conservation 

State of Indiana 



THE DEPARTMENT 
OF CONSERVATION 



STATE OF INDIANA 



W. A. GUTHRIE, Chairman 
STANLEY COULTER 
JOHN W. HOLTZMAN 
RICHARD M. HOLMAN, Secretary 



Publication No. 10 



RICHARD LIEBER, DIRECTOR 



The Tri-State Forestry Conference 

OHIO, ILLINOIS, INDIANA 



INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 

CLAYPOOL HOTEL 
OCTOBER 22 and 23. 1919 



MANAGEMENT 

V,- >.■ -1 . -CA. OF 

THE DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION 
STATE OF INDIANA 



FORT WAYNE PRINTING COMPANY 

CONTRACTORS FOR INDIANA STATE PRINTING AND BINDING 

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA 

1920 



1\ 



THE TRI-STATE FORESTRY CONFERENCE 

October 22 and 23, 1919 

INDEX. 

Wednesday Morning Session .' 5-19 

Hon. W. A. Guthrie 5 

Mr. Evans Woollen 6 

Hon. James P. Goodrich 6-7 

Mr. Edmund Secrest 7-11 

Mr. R. B. Miller 11-16 

Mr. Charles C. Deam 16-19 

Wednesday Afternoon Session 19-43 

Mr. Charles G. Sauers 19-22 

Lt.-Col. Henry S. Graves 23-33 

Mr. J. G. Peters 34-40 

Discussion 40-43 

Wednesday Evening, Banquet Session 43-64 

Mr. Charles Bookwalter 44-45 

Mr. P. S. Ridsdale 45-46 

Mr. Charles Bookwalter 46-47 

Prof. H. H. Chapman 47-56 

Mr. Wilson Compton 56-63 

Discussion 63-64 

Thursday Morning Session 64 

Mr. Edmund Secrest 64-68 

Dr. F. W. Shepardson 68-71 

Mr. Richard Lieber 71-75 

Mr. Marcus Schaff 75-79 

Mr. I. C. Williams 79-84 

Discussion 84 

Thursday Afternoon Session 85 

Discussion 85-87 

Prof. Stanley Coulter 87-92 

Mr. P. S. Ridsale 92 

Mr. Findlay Torrence 92-96 

Mr. Harry Scarce 96-100 

Report of Resolutions Committee 100-103 

fs. •t B. 



THE TRI-STATE FORESTRY CONFERENCE 

October 22 and 23, 1919 
WEDNESDAY MORNING SESSION OCT. 22, 1919. 

The meetiBg was called to order at 10:00 a. m., with Hon. W. A. 
Guthrie presiding. 

HON. W. A. GUTHRIE : Fellow citizens, we welcome you here today. 
It is quite fitting that the Tri-State Forestry Conference should be called 
here in the center of what has been the finest hardwood forest of the 
United States. 

We are now entering upon an era which will witness a great advance 
in the reforestation which should produce and conserve our timber. The 
shortage of timber is a source of concern to many wood working plants 
and to plan for the future will give forth much for you gentlemen to work 
out. Our States have produced some of the best and most valuable timber 
of the nation. We have had such an abundance of timber that we have 
overlooked the rapidity with which we have been using it, and now we 
are unable to supply the demand. 

Ohio, Illinois and Indiana are three of the seven states whose sup- 
plies feed the world. We are in the lead in live stock, agriculture and 
manufacturing. 

Many of our sister states are ahead of us in the reforestation and are 
appropriating more money for this work. Pennsylvania appropriates 
$315,000.00 each year and has a holding of over six or eight million dollars. 
New York $288,000.00, Michigan $115,000.00 and many of the states from 
$25,000.00 to $75,000.00. Indiana has only been appropriating $7,400.00 for 
all purposes. Many foreign countries control their forests by handling 
scientifically and they are able to pay a revenue of three or more per cent, 
at the same time keep their forest intact. 

Statistics show before the war that Belgium had a population of 652 
to the square mile and yet had 18% in timber. Switzerland 235 population 
to the square mile with 23% in timber. France 190 to the square mile 
with 23% in timber. Germany 25%, Austria 35%, yet in Indiana with 
only 75 population we have less than 10% in timber. 

The future of the timber problems of the three states are similar and 
it is for this reason that the three states have met here for this conference. 
If the timber supply for the future is to be assured then the wood using 
industries of the states must understand better how to control the influ- 
ences which are now at work destroying the supply. 

The public must take an immediate interest in the timber lands and see 
that legislation is enacted which will make for the use of permanent mill, 
forest development, place timber on the market only as needed, give 
adequate forest fir^ protection and assure renewal after logging. 



We have with us today some very able and distinguished gentlemeii, 
men who are authority along different lines, so we know that much good 
should come out of this convention and that we should work out some plan 
which will bring about better forestry development. We had arranged 
today for your chairman, a man who had been foremost in forestry, who 
is President of the American Forestry Association, — Mr. Charles Lathrop 
Pack — but who was taken seriously sick and sent this telegram last night: 
"Mr. Richard Lieber, Indianapolis : I am disappointed not to be able to 
be in Indianapolis tomorrow. I am confined to my room with a hard 
cold in my throat. My doctor forbids my going out of doors. Wish the 
conference every success and send best greetings. Charles Lathrop Pack." 

Indianapolis always has been ready to take the place if one falls out 
and we have invited one of our leading citizens who is the head of one of 
our largest financial houses, whose name stands out for honesty, integrity 
and ability and who was the fuel director of the State during the war. 
It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Evans Woollen of this 
city. (Applause) 

MR. EVANS WOOLLEN: I have protested to Senator Guthrie that 
there is no appropriateness in his invitation. Perhaps an excuse for it 
and for my acceptance of it may be found in the fact that during my 
service as Federal Fuel Administrator for Indiana, I came to some 
measure of appreciation of the importance of the conservation of fuel sup- 
plies and this realization was confirmed later during a meeting in Wash- 
ington of the coal dealers when they were talking of substituting wood 
for coal. However, whether appropriately here or inappropriately, I am 
glad to have the privilege of greeting you and presenting to you Hon. 
James P. Goodrich, Governor of Indiana. (Applause) 

HON. JAMES P. GOODRICH: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the 
conference, I am glad to add a word of welcome to you and to thank you 
for coming here today. 

Conservation is looked upon with a sort of mild tolerance. It was 
just about ten years ago that we started to think about it at all. We are 
just beginning to realize how prodigal had been our waste of the great 
basic resources of our country. AVe are just beginning to awaken to the 
fact that we have wasted them in an almost criminal way, I have lived 
my whole life in Indiana. I was born at a time when the forest land far 
exceeded the clear land and I have seen millions of feet of walnut and 
poplar and the best white oak that ever grew out of the ground wasted 
in this State. We are now having to get our supply from the south and 
southwest to keep our factories going. It is a tremendous difliculty, because 
with the increasing freight rate, it becomes more and more difficult to 
get it. 

And so we need to look out for the waste lands of these three States 
and begin to regrow the forests that we have wasted to undo the mistakes 
of the past as nearly as we possibly can. We have hundreds of thous- 
ands of acres of land in Indiana that can't be devoted to agriculture 
that could be used to raise timber. We must remember that we are not 
engaging in this work for the immediate future, it is more for the far 
distant future. The trees that we plant today will not come into com- 



mercial use until our grandchildren are running this country. It is 
the work for tomorrow and for the future of our country. I take it that 
the trees that are planted as a result of this meeting which will come 
to their full growth perhaps in a hundred years from now will be the 
breathing spots and play grounds. We are not spending very much money, 
but we are getting results, buying up small tracts of forests, putting state 
parks here and there over the State. 

I am glad to have you here. I congratulate you upon the great work 
in which you are engaged because of what it means to the future of our 
country. It is a public question. But you can't afford to grow forests 
on land worth two or three hundred dollars an acre. It don't pay and 
private owners can't do it. 

I really know so little of this question and some of you men here are 
so much better able to speak upon the subject than I am so I am going 
to give you a chance to talk. I thank you. (Applause) 

MR. WOOLLEN : Governor Cox and Governor Lowden have found it 
impossible to be present. We will now have the satisfaction of listening 
to Mr. Edmund Secrest, Forester of Ohio. (Applause) 

MR. EDMUND SECREST: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the con- 
vention, I am certainly glad to be with you this morning to tell you some- 
thing of forestry conditions in Ohio. 

Ohio is a state of relatively small farms, the average of which is 
eighty-eight acres. The lands in farms or forest tracts aggregate twenty- 
six million acres and of this area approximately one million, three hun- 
dred thousand acres, or five per cent, could be utilized in some form of 
agricultural development. There are three million, five hundred thousand 
acres of woodland in the State of which some five hundred thousand 
acres are in large buildings, other than farm lands in southeast Ohio. 
The average farm woodland is twelve acres in extent. The composition 
of the native forest is predominantly hardwood with occasional sporadic 
coniferous areas in the Ohio river countries. 

The farm woodlands on eighty per cent, of the State's area are on 
land of considerable agricultural value. These tracts are being encroached 
upon directly by clearing for tillage or pasturage, and indirectly by live 
stock grazing. It may be expected as a matter of course that woodlands 
on lands of high productive value will gradually lessen in extent, with 
more intensive agricultural practices superinduced by a greater demand 
for farm products, and the decreasing size of farms. The woodlands of this 
type were representative of the most valuable hardwood forests of the 
country. It is from them that much of the raw material for the wood 
using industries is obtained for they contain the great bulk of the remain- 
ing original forests of the State. First quality white oak, red oak, yellow 
poplar, white ash, black walnut and elm came from the most productive 
soils, and strange though it may seem, the farm woodlands of central and 
northern Ohio contain the original stands, while those of the inherent tim- 
ber soils of southern Ohio passed over a half century ago. A logical land 
classification would place this class of farm woodlands within the zone 
of agricultural production. On the other hand, their passing will require 
time for there are many landowners who cannot be persuaded to part with 



their woodlands even though they exist upon land of high value. Probably 

their numbei- will increase ; certainly there has been a decided change in 
attitude and sentiment during the past decade in favor of vi'oodland main- 
tenance. Nevertheless we cannot escape the conviction that woodlands 
on land worth from one hundred to three hundred dollars per acre need 
not be considered a dependable future resource. Economically these 
acres represent in the aggregate a considerable loss to the commonwealth. 
The mere fact that they occupy lands of high value even though they be 
productive forests would in itself constitute misutilization. Through the 
deterioiating influence of grazing these detached bodies of native forest 
for the most part are cumberers of the ground with the original trees 
mature, or culls, the young growth lacking or of inferior composition, the 
shade too dense for the growth of nutritious grasses, these tracts are 
neither good forest nor good pasture. It is true that many of them can 
be rehabilitated. In fact by proper protection and management, regenera- 
tion by natural seeding is most satisfactory. 

There is a field for farm forestry within the regions mentioned — the 
steep slopes along streams, overflow lands, ravines, etc., which could be 
given over more profitably to timber growing than other purposes. The 
farmer's interest in this phase is fortified by the direct benefits accruing 
from the small woodland. From it he would have available for farm use 
material for construction, posts, fuel, etc. He will appreciate more and 
more the value of shelter belts, both for protection and utility. It may 
be expected that such forestry can be promoted with moderate success 
in the better agricultural sections, and some progress has been made in 
this direction. 

Before leaving this phase of the discussion it may be well to state that 
hundreds of farmers are attempting in greater or less degree to maintain 
and manage their small woodlands in accordance with recognized prin- 
ciples of forestry, without regard for the value of the land on which 
they exist. From this fact, however, there can be no outgrowth of estab- 
lished policy vrith reference to such tracts, nor even vsdll there be any 
assurance that the successors to the property of these men will continue 
their practices. 

The unglaciated hill lands of the southeast quarter of Ohio are the 
inherent timber areas of the state. A million acres could be devoted to this 
purpose without infringing on agricultural development. The woodlands 
in this section are in holdings of from two hundred to twenty thousand 
acres, small portions of which are utilized for desultory farm operations. 
Surface land values range from two dollars to twenty-five dollars^ per 
acre. During the early part of the last century, the original forest was 
taken up in large holdings by furnace companies, which led to the develop- 
ment of the charcoal iron industry. The timber was converted into char- 
coal which was utilized in the reduction of the local ore. Up to the time 
of the collapse of this industry in the early seventies, not only the original 
forest but oftentimes second growth and even third growth was used. 
The successive cuttings affected the composition of forest, but the most 
deleterious results occurred through the conversion of high forest to 
coppice, and the weakening of the reproductive capacity with each cut- 



ting. Following this period the surface lands were almost abandoned, 
excepting that such portions which could be tilled were cleared and 
farmed. As the woodland developed it was again cut over principally 
for tie timber. The promiscuous clearing for tillage has complicated the 
problems involved in rehabilitating these areas, converting steep hill sides 
into fields has always been a common practice. Lack of soil fertility or 
indifference as well as difficulties in maintaining the fertility leads to the 
abandonment of tlie land resulting in a reversion to the old field type 
of forest. This type is difficult to deal with because it is so inferior in 
composition and stand, resulting oftentimes in mere weed growth. 

Artificial reforestation by private individuals of the old field where the 
typical growth prevails in impracticable in many instances because of 
the excessive costs of formation and subsequent cleaning. The native 
forests under a system of management will be a valuable asset to the 
state for they are considerable, and are an inherent part of that section. 
Protection against fires is needed but damage of consequence is limited 
to a few counties where wild Ij^nds are in the hands of absentee land 
lords. Many owners are exercising vigilence in respect to this feature, but 
a sytem of state and national aid is needed. The generally prevailing in- 
difference in attitude toward the proper maintenance of the forsets in this 
section is a factor which must be considered in this discussion. There are 
a few large tracts held for the value of the second growth alone. A con- 
siderable portion of southeast Ohio is underlaid by the coal measures, 
and many of the furnace tracts. are in the hands of coal operators. They 
own the surface along with the mineral rights in most instances. Their 
business is to mine coal and the surface to them is of consideration only 
as it affects their mining operations. They value the woodland insofar as 
it contributes timber to supply the needs of the mines until they are worked 
out. Beyond that they have no immediate interest, for they are not 
in the timber business. However much they may be censured for neglecting 
their woodlands, there are obstacles in the way of forestry practices. 
There are no markets for inferior timber. Coal and gas have practically 
driven fire wood out of the market. Charcoal production barely more 
than pays for cutting the wood and burning the coal. In fact, many 
tracts are turned over to burners to coal for the price of the wood. The 
stumpage paid for pit props is so small that transactions are never based 
on that product. Tie timber is virtually the first product from second 
growth forests for which there is ready sale. Inability to dispose of the 
lower grades of timber is a discouraging feature, and is certainly a 
deterrent in the practice of forestry by private owners. 

The present State Forestry Department was organized by legislative 
act in 1906. It was placed under jurisdiction of the Board of Control of 
the Agricultural Experiment Station. Broad power was given the Board 
along investigational and demonstration lines, but there was no provision 
for forest protection. In 1914 by special enactment the Board was author- 
ized to purchase lands for state forests. The work of the Department 
has been substantially along the following lines. 

(1) At the outset a preliminary forest survey of the State was made 
with the detailed surveys of certain counties. This was done to determine 
the conditions, the needs, and the lines of work required. 



10 

(2) Assistance to private owners, state, municipal and private insti- 
tutions in the management of their woodlands and in reforestation projects. 

(3) The station has maintained nurseries for the propagation and 
distribution of planting stock for reforestation. Heretofore the distri- 
bution of stock has been limited largely to experimental and demonstration 
work. 

(4) Forest arboretums have been established on a number of public 
and quasi public institutions. 

(5) Three municipal forests and forest parks have been established 
under the direction of the Department, one of which is primarily for the 
protection of the potable water supply. 

(6) Two state forests have been purchased and these areas are used 
for experimental and demonstration purposes. 

(7) A survey of the important drainage basins made in 1913, follow- 
ing the unprecedented flood of that year. 

(8) During the past five years more attention has been given to 
problems of forest utilization. This phase in fact has grown to one of 
most importance. It is felt that the Department can be of real help to 
the woodland owner, and the wood user. The average owner has little con- 
ception of timber values, but has to proceed in marketing his products. 
He has great difficulty in finding markets for many classes of timber. In 
these matters we have been able to render assistance of considerable 
consequence. 

It has also been possible to locate and to secure for wood users certain 
classes of timber which they desire and to cause mature or over-mature 
timber to be placed on the market. The effect of such work on the whole 
as we view it, is that it tends to create or to stimulate stagnant markets 
for the various classes of woodland products. The time of two of our men 
is largely given to this work, one of whom has had some years of practical 
experience in the timber business. 

It was found at the outset that land owners were seeking information 
regarding the lasting qualities of the several kinds of post timbers. The 
Department undertook to investigate this matter with the result that 
data were obtained on some ten of the most common timbers. This work 
embraced the examination of three hundred fifty fences containing over 
forty thousand posts, the fences ranging in ages from four to fifty years. 
These data brought out many interesting facts, chief of which being that 
there is considerable variation in the durability of different wood of the 
same species, and that the relative scale is based not upon the length of 
life of one or several posts of a given species, but upon the average of p-eat 
numbers. Data has been collected on the average stands per acre by 
counties of the different commercial tree species of the State. The results 
of this work is now on press and it will give fairly accurate data to wood 
users and others on the amounts and distribution of the available com- 
mercial timber. 

(9) Cities have from time to time requested assistance in the plant- 
ing and care of shade trees. Since they contribute indirectly to the sup- 
port of the Department it was felt that they were entitled to such assist- 
ance. Shade tree surveys are therefore made upon request, and consid- 



11 

erable interest has developed in this respect. The need of such work Is 
so evident in the average city, that it scarcely merits comment. It has 
resulted indirectly in much good to the Department, chiefly in securing 
wider moral and financial support. 

(10) From the outset it has been the conviction that experimentation 
and research was vitally necessary for the development of forestry under 
Ohio conditions. We in fact have assumed the attitude that such work 
is fundamental in the working out of a stable forest policy for Ohio. It 
Is hardly to be conceived how best results can be obtained without definite 
knoweldge of many facts we do not have. We need to have these facta 
before we can answer many questions now pending, and it is to be regretted 
that it is going to take so long to learn them. It is to be our policy, how- 
ever, to understand more work of this character than it has been possible 
to do in the past. (Applause) 

MR. WOOLLEN: The meeting wil'. now be addressed by Mr. R. B. 
Miller, Forester of Illinois. (Applause) 

MR. R. B. MILLER : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, it is the intention 
in this paper to discuss very briefly those forest influences and problems 
in Illinois which are vital to a forestry policy, which are also common 
to Indiana and Ohio and which will furnish a committee from this con- 
ference some definite basis upon which to work when they summarize its 
findings. 

You have only to look at some of the topographic sheets which the 
United States Geological Survey and the State Geological Survey are 
making in Illinois to assure yourself that it is not entirely a prairie State. 
According to Professor J. G. Mosier, of the Soil Survey of Illinois, In 
the sixty-two counties covered by the survey prior to 1917 there are 3,434,- 
625 acres of broken and hilly land which should be in timber. Going over 
the remaining forty counties, for which reports have not been finished 
and results compiled, and comparing the amount of rough land there with 
adjacent counties surveyed, he believes we can add to this 2,321,000 acres 
more, making a total for the state of about 5,750,000 acres, almost one- 
sixth of its total area of thirty-six million acres. This area, whose out- 
lines are almost identical with the limits of the yellow silt loam soil as 
mapped by soil experts, varies in the different counties from .18 to eighty 
per cent, and if cultivated is subject to serious and destructive erosion. 

What is being done to keep this land which is potential forest soil 
permanently in timber? A few figures from some of the members of the 
Illinois Academy of Sciences who have been working on some of these 
counties for several years will help to answer the question. Dr. Pepoon 
of Chicago says that Jo Daviess county, credited with sixty-two and four- 
tenths per cent, of this class of land was originally a forest land. Now 
there is only about five per cent, of merchantable timber in solid blocks 
used mainly for posts and fuel, while about fifteen per cent, may be 
classed as heavily culled. In La Salle county, according to Dr. George D. 
Fuller, of Chicago University, out of 35,220 acres examined only 6,530 
acres, or two and three-tenths per cent, of the area covered by the survey 
is forested, this being in ravines or along the larger rivers. 



12 

In Cook County, according to Dr. Waterman, of Northwestern Uni- 
versity, Department of Botany, out of 5,760 acres surveyed, only seven hun- 
dred acres still bear original forest growth and of this only eighty acres 
is virgin forest. The Cook County Forest Preserve Board, however, is 
doing much to save these scattered bits of native forest for the people 
of Cook County as a recreation ground and now has over 17,500 acres of 
such forest under its jurisdiction. 

Forest Influences. Among the forest influences or forest reactions 
which should be considered in Illinois are the effects of the removal of 
the forest cover in causing irregularity of stream flow due to the drying up 
of streams and springs, with destructive floods. Dr. Fernow says that the 
stopping of floods is an engineering problem but that forests can be de- 
pended upon to render the flow of water throughout the year more uniform. 
Illustrations from remote regions lose their effect but we might take a 
specific one from Jo Daviess County. One flood in a stream only five- 
miles long destroyed a stone mill dam and wrecked the large flouring mill. 
Some fifteen feet of silt was deposited on the bed of the mill pond after 
the flood had subsided, representing as Dr. Pepoon says, "one foot of 
eroded soil from four acres of farm land." 

Another marked result of deforestation in this same county has been 
the drying up of springs and brooks and the lowering of the water table. 
This is quite in conformity with evidence cited by Greve, by McGee, Tourney 
and Mead. Where originally there were six minor brooks and fifteen 
springs in a certain map area, today none remain and the ground water has 
been lowered from eight to twelve feet below its former level. This is not 
the opinion of a casual visitor to the region but the observation of one 
who has studied the same region for years. 

Erosion. It is stated on good authority that leaf mould will absorb 
from two to four times its weight in water. Due to this large absorptive 
capacity, measurements made in France show that surface run-off from 
wooded slopes is only one-half of that from deforested slopes. Reduction 
of run-off prevents erosion, so that one of the main remedies for badly 
eroded and gullied land, according to the Illinois Soil Survey, is "to put 
them back into forests as rapidly as possible." Their reports abound 
with instances of where soil abandonment is taking place, but more espe- 
cially in the seven southern counties and in those adjoining the Wabash, 
Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The Illinois Geological Survey speaks of 
deforestation as one of the agencies in causing erosion, with the attendant 
evils of gullying and sheet washing. 

Let us take some specific examples. Dr. Fuller says of LaSalle county, 
in the upper Illinois valley region, that "along many of the stream valleys 
are slopes of such a character that the removal of the forest cover will 
cause, and in some cases has already caused rather extensive gullying." 

In Union county, where the Dongola topographic sheet is being prepared, 
many fields were seen, especially in yellow silt loam soil, where gullies 
were forming and the owners of the farms were making unsuccessful 
efforts to stop them with brush and straw. According to the older resi- 
dents, these slopes had years ago been covered with a forest of tulip, white 
Q^}£ &nd ^^ed P§Hr P^4 PaH ^>^4 sycamore sp§dli|^gs, ^lo»g with sass^f^'^^ 



13 

and inferior species, can now be found getting a foothold in some of them, 
showing that with a little assistance they might again become forested. In 
some fields seed had come in from the lower bottomland woods ; in many 
cases it would be a question of planting. 

Dr. Pepoon says that in Jo Daviess county cutting away the forests 
has resulted in erosion, "with all of its attendant evils." The Illinois 
Geological Survey in dealing with the Galena and Elizabeth Quadrangles, 
there says, under recommendations about erosion that if light pasturing 
and getting the land back into grass are not sufficient to stop the wash, 
rapidly growing trees, like the cottonwood and locust, can be planted, 
and the fields gradually brought back into timber land. Then later, by 
judicious cutting and replanting, the land may be made to yield a revenue 
from timber, instead of producing scantier and scantier crops until they 
become so small as to have no value. 

Competent authority says that leaf-litter should not be grazed or 
burned over in order to have the maximum effect in preventing surface 
run-off, and this brings us to the subjects of grazing and fire protection. 
Suppose we take first the question of grazing and the problem of what 
may be called woodland pasture. 

Grazing and the Woodland Pasture. Dr. George D. Fuller, of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago Department of Botany, who has worked two summers 
In LaSalle county and knows thoroughly the character of the woods in that 
county, says that "grazing is so universally practiced that not over 5% of 
the oak and bottom land forests show reproduction in progress at the 
present time." From a strip estimate made in September of this year 
in a 100 acre woodland and pasture of the open park type, classed by Dr. 
Fuller as an "oak-hickory forest," we find as a consequence of grazing of 
cattle and hogs that there is less than one tree per acre of the three-inch 
diameter dass of any species. Most of the trees are over 50 years of age, 
showing that there is no future crop of young trees coming on. The trees 
are very short holed, and while diameter growth was found to be rapid in 
these trees there are only 46 trees per acre and a stand of 1881 board feet 
per acre, so that the increment in volume on an acre would be very small. 

In other forests of LaSalle county, where for some reason grazing had 
been lighter, we found the number of two and three inch trees had in- 
creased to 62 per aci'e, the total number of trees standing on an acre to 
348, and the stand per acre to 4,625 board feet. While this disparity was 
in part due to differences in site, we can attribute a large part to the fact 
that trees of the smaller diameter classes had not been destroyed by graz- 
ing, but had grown up to healthy, middle-sized trees making up the bulk 
of the forest and offering some chance of financial profit to the owner. 

In the ravines of some of these pastured forests in LaSalle county, 
where moisture conditions were better, there were more trees of the 
smaller diameter classes again and fermination conditions were so good 
and acorns so numerous on the ground that with a little care in excluding 
Stock a good growth of young trees of r^d oak and other rapidly-growing 
spcces would have resulted. 

Some of these poorly-stocked, struggling white oak forests on rather 
poor upland forest soils above Indian Creek Ua^ ip less t^h^ii 75 ye^rs pyg? 
^Hced the foUpwiRg crop per ^gf^ 1 



14 

116 — 8-foot fence posts. 
36 — 25-foot piling, with a top diameter of 6 Inches, 

212 — 7-foot mine props. 
2042 — 5-foot mine props. 
Counting the pasture worth from three to four dollars per acre, it is a 
question as to whether the land was not worth more for timber growing 
than it will be for pasture or farm land when cut off. Besides, it will be 
subject to severe gullying due to ravines which run through It, which 
will extend themselves farther back each year it lies as stump land. 

G^^azing — Jo Daviess County. This county is situated in the north- 
western part of the State, and has escaped glaciation. Speaking of an 
imgrazed forest in Jo Daviess County, which from the enumeration of many 
rare herbaceous plants must be a paradise for the botanist, Dr. Pepoon, of 
Chicago, says : "A very striking feature of this woodland is the very 
large number of young oak, ash and hard maple, and to a lesser extent 
hickery, elm, basswood and ironwood trees, many of which have reached 
a height of 6 to 8 feet, and are evidently well started in a successful 
struggle to reach maturity. This shows better than any other fact the 
benefit to reproduction of keeping out cattle, sheep and hogs. From this 
we may say that any forest land in this area will be able to perpetuate 
itself if properly protected from grazing animals." 

Wesley Bradfield, speaking of the northern Illinois river region, says, 
that the most important consideration is that forest land should be devoted 
solely to raising trees and should not be used as pasture land. "Forest land 
should have the advantage of an unbroken ground cover of leaf mulch, 
a soil which is not being constantly trampled by stock so that it will 
remain loose and porous and a solid stand of trees, whether of new seed- 
lings or trees which are nearly mature and ready to harvest." 

Dr. Waterman, in speaking of the tracts of forest in Cook county says 
that the worst things are picnicing and pasturage ; while Dr. Vestal, 
speaking of Cumberland county, says pasturage is general and erosion has 
resulted in many places. This connection between pasturage and gullying 
of the land is mentioned by the Illinois Geological Survey, deforestation 
and grazing being discussed as two important factors in erosion of man's 
introduction. "The hoofs of cattle have cut the sod and over-grazing has 
killed the grass in places, so that the soil has been laid bare, to be washed 
by rains and blown by winds. These slopes in Fox valley might have been 
kept in a more productive state by more restricted grazing, or by letting 
them remain in timber." 

Fwest Taxation. Prof. Chapman will discuss the modern methods of 
taxation as applied to timberlands, so it is only necessary to mention 
the known facts about taxation of timber land in Illinois. From personal 
interviews with owners one learns that they are not cutting off the timber 
because taxation is excessive but through a desire to benefit the pasture, 
combined with ignorance of the true stumpage value of the timber and 
the desire to get rid of it quickly and easily. This they do by selling it 
for a lump sum to contractors dealing in mine props, posts and piling, 
who have no interest in the tract other than financial profit. This is largely 
a matter for educatioa of the public after it has been found out what thQ 



15 

relative returas are from timber and farm crops on the same type of soil, 
taking into consideration the expense for getting each crop, at compound 
interest. 

The main changes to be made would seem to be the adoption of more 
uniform methods of valuation for timber land by the county assessors. 
According to Wesley Bradfield, who investigated the methods of taxation 
in about 15 counties of the State in 1908, these methods very greatly 
among the following: Taking the value of the land for cultivation when 
cleared ; assessing a certain per cent, of the value of timber on the land ; 
taking the value of timber land as unimproved land only ; value with 
reference to its location to easily accessible markets ; the value of the 
land when used for pasture; and often simply an arbitrary determination 
of the fair cash value of the property by the assessor. 

There is a provision for a bounty to be offered by the Board of County 
Commissioners to any person who shall plant one or more acres of land 
with forest trees and properly cultviate the same for three years. This 
bounty amounts to $10.00 per acre per annum for three years for each 
acre planted, trees not being spaced a greater distance than ten feet 
apart each way. Judging from the effect of bounty laws in other States, 
this law has had little effect in stimulating general planting. 

Fire Protection. So far as we have ascertained, there are no state 
organizations for the protection of timber from fire in Illinois, except 
such as may come under the jurisdiction of county forest preserve boards. 
Fortunately, most of the timber is in small tracts, usually completely 
surrounded by roads, which greatly decreases the fire hazard. 

According to data compiled from reports sent in to Dr. Forbes in 1915 
by the several county crop reporters, some counties had no fires and those 
reported were most commonly caused by railroads, brush burning and 
campers. In Perry county it was mentioned that fall and early winter 
fires were started by coon hunters and in Union county we were told that 
it was a common occurrence in some parts for these men to burn over 
the woods at night to make travel through the woods easier for dogs. 
There have been a few cases of incendiarism reported but this is punish- 
able under Section 18 of the Criminal Code with a fine of from $5.00 to 
$100.00 for wilfully starting brush or grass fires. 

Railroads are made responsible for fires started by their engines and 
there is a law requiring them to keep their rights of way clear of weeds, 
grass and inflammable material. 

Summarizing, we have shown that almost six million acres of land in 
Illinois, on account of topogi-aphy and soil, are better fitted for growing 
timber than for any other purpose ; that our stands of virgin timber are dis- 
appearing rapidly through cutting or are being replaced by those of poor 
growth capacity through grazing and occasional fires ; that this removal 
of the forests, as evidenced by reliable investigators in several counties 
and as shown by the reports of the Illinois Soil Survey and Illinois Geolog- 
ical Survey, is bringing about the usual results — disastrous floods, the 
drying up of springs and brooks and the lowering of the level of the ground 
water ; that by the gullying of the lighter soils due to the removal of the 
forest cover by unwise cutting and the pasturing of stock, much land is 



u 

being rendered unfit for agriculture and offers a cliance for reforestation ; 
and tliat minor changes may be necessary in methods of valuation of tim- 
berlands and in fire protection. 

The question remains, then, as to what steps the State should take, in 
the interests of her citizens, not only to assume her share of responsibility 
in the national program for increasing the available timber supply of the 
country but to safeguard those remnants of the original forest which not 
only contributed largely to the development of the State and her industries, 
but by whose destruction the balance of Nature's forces have been seriously 
disturbed. 

Just as we will owe this conference a debt of gratitude for presenting 
these facts to the public in a new light, so we look to it for valuable 
assistance in working out a solution of this vital economic question. 
(Applause) 

MR. WOOLLEN: I now introduce the forester of Indiana, Mr. Charles 
C. Deam. (Applause) 

MR. CHARLES C. DEAM: Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, the 
subject of my paper is "Forest Conditions in Indiana." 

The area of Indiana is 22,403,502 acres. Practically the whole of the 
State was formerly covered with one of the best hardwood forests of the 
world. The wooded area has steadily decreased since active settlement 
began about one hundred years ago. In 1880 the forest area has dwindled 
down to 4,355,191 acres of first-class timberland. In 1917 the timberland 
area of Indiana is given as 1,664,047 acres, or about seven per cent, of the 
whole area. Virgin forests have become so scarce that only a few isolated 
tracts remain. Turkey Run State Park, the largest of these, containing 
less than three hundred acres, was recently purchased by some patriotic 
citizens, and turned over to the State as a relic of the grandeur and 
wealth of Indiana's primeval forests. 

In 1910 statistics rank Indiana third in the amount and value of its 
improved land, exceeded only by Iowa and Illinois. These statistics show 
that Indiana is essentially an agricultural State, and that it will always 
remain so, is implied by its geographical location. The geographical situa- 
tion of Indiana favors agriculture, including both grazing and horticulture. 
It is traversed by trunk line railroads in all directions with nearby term- 
inals such as Chicago, with an estimated population of over three millions ; 
Milwaukee with 504,707; Detroit and Cleveland with 936,000 each and 
Cincinnati with 472,668. Indiana is the nearest source of supply to the 
cities enumerated, for certain agricultural and horticultural products. 
It also serves many smaller cities such as Louisville and others that 
could be named. 

The surface of the greater part of Indiana is level and is contained 
in the glaciated region. This area has great agricultural possibilities, 
about ninety-five per cent, of it being already well improved. It is 
predicted that the forests of this area will gradually disappear and that 
the only forest tree growth will be in the form of windbreaks. There are, 
however, about twenty-three counties in the southern part of the State 
that have a rough topography. This area is a series of hills and fertile 
valleys of varying width and length. The hills vary in height from one 



17 

hundred to two hundred feet. The slopes also vary from gentle to precip- 
itous. The greater part of the slopes are gentle to steep. The soil of the 
greater part of the area is limestone and will support a good stand of 
blue grass. Parts of about ten cotinties have a residual soil composed of 
decomposed sandstone, knobstone or knobstone shale which will not 
support a good stand of blue grass, and which are regarded as our 
poorest agricultural and forestal lands. This hill area may- be roughly 
divided into forestal and agricultural lands. There is, however, a wide 
divergance of opinion as to the definition of each in Indiana. The for- 
ester tells us that all lands that will not support a permanent and profitable 
agriculture should be classed as forest land. He calls attention to areas 
that have already been cleared and farmed successfully for a few years, 
but having become washed and eroded, have been abandoned. He says : 
"Such lands should not have been cleared." The Agricultural Experimental 
Station expert tells us that the washing and erosion is the result of poor 
farming, and that practically any slope in Indiana might be cleared and 
farmed or grazed successfully. The land owner will tell you he can 
clear a rugged slope and grow tobacco on it a year or two and receive 
an income from five to one hundred times the value of the land, but he 
fails to tell you that after a few years the soil on their farmed slopes will 
be washed away. We should, therefore, not be surprised to find thou- 
sands of acres of hill land that have been farmed for a year or two and 
then abandoned, or left to "go to pasture or grow up" to use the vernacular 
of the hill country. 

Today there are thousands of acres of cleared land in the southern 
part of the State which are not now farmed because they have washed 
or eroded so that they cannot be farmed or are too unprofitable to be 
farmed. They are growing up in poverty grass, weeds, briars, sassafras, 
persimmon, etc. These washed areas usually occur in small tracts of a few 
acres in extent. Yet the agricultural expert tells us all of these areas 
can be redeemed and be made profitable for agriculture and grazing. 

Is this hill country forestal or agricultural lands? Let us consult 
statistics and also note the activities of the present population. In 1915 
ninety-two per cent, of Indiana was listed as farm land. Of twenty of 
the hilliest counties of the State, eleven reported more than ninety-two 
per cent, of their county as farm land. In 1917 the average sized farm in 
Indiana was one hundred three acres, yet in eleven of the roughest counties 
of the State, the average farm contained only ninety-six acres. The 
average rural population in Indiana in 1916 was forty-three per square 
mile. Yet Crawford, Orange and Perry counties which are regarded as 
among the roughest counties of the State had an average of forty. The 
average forty-three for the State represents an inflated figure, since the 
large rural coal mine and suburban populations are included in the State 
average. It is reasonable to believe that agriculture today in the counties 
just named is supporting as large and contented a population as the 
average county. 

It is a fact that the forests are disappearing' most rapidly in the 
hilliest counties. Why is this? The following may be offered in answer. 
The land owner has no notion of the annual increment value of an acre of 



18 

forest land. The writer has asked scores of land owners at what they esti- 
mated the value of the growth of an acre of woodland, and not one has 
had the knowledge or even the courage to venture an answer. He does 
not know the potential value of a forest, but he does know that a forest 
crop is a long time investment, and that his economic conditions demand an 
investment of short duration. The hilly or forestal land of Indiana is 
surrounded by abundant coal fields, and the slash of a forest crop has 
little or no commercial value. In most instances after all of the mer- 
chantable timber has been removed, the slash would not pay for clearing 
of the land. Coal can be bought for what it costs to cut wood and many 
farmers who have wood rotting in their forest, take produce to market 
and return with a load of coal. The time required to cut wood can be 
spent at more remunerative employment or the bitter winter days of wood 
cutting can be turned into a rabbit hunt. In the hilly counties there is no 
outlet for surplus labor such as in the northern counties. In the north, 
witness each morning the thousands of laborers, especially girls, on 
the interurban cars going to the cities to work. As a consequence the 
farmer of the hill country is compelled to use the surplus man-power on 
his farm, which in the aggregate is eight per cent, smaller than the farm of 
the north. To do this, he sets to clearing more land, and grows tobacco, 
which requires about ten times more man-power to grow than corn. Or, 
he will grow tomatoes, strawberries or other bush fruits or vegetables. As 
an example of this form of intensive agriculture may be cited the growing 
of strawberries on the "knobs" in the vicinity of Borden where as high 
as five car loads have been shipped in one day. The greatest inroad on our 
forest area has been made by the recent development of the dairy business. 
The introduction and wide use of the silo ; our recent knowledge of certain 
forage plants, such as alfalfa ; and our greater facilities for marketing 
milk and cream, such as improved roads, auto trucks, etc., have been 
extremely favorable to the development of the dairy business. The high 
price of food products has advanced the price of butter fat to the point 
where the hill farmer will tell you that the income from his cows is equal 
to that of his farm. In order to get more grazing land, every available 
nook and corner and forest land is taken, and the remaining forest land 
is being fenced. It is now rare to see open forest land, or a fenced forest 
that is not pastured. It is a well known fact that pasturage will stop 
all reproduction in a hardwood forest, and if there is not a change in the 
management of the forest area in the hill country, there will be no forests 
after the maturity of the present crop. 

The fire hazard in Indiana is not a serious barrier to maintaining our 
forest area. Forests are usually open, small and separated by numerous 
public roads. In any event fire would not burn over any great area if 
any organized effort was made to stop it. As a rule, owners do not care 
if their forests are burned over, in fact many burn their forests over 
each year to keep reproduction down, and to burn up the leaves so the 
grass will get a start. When a fire is started in a forest there is little 
effort made to stop it except when it threatens a fence, haystack or build- 
ings. 

Our present tax system is an important factor in encouraging land 



19 

owners to clear land. There is a widespreafl belief that forests should 
be exempt from taxation, basing the claim on the communal benefit of the 
forest. 

To summarize : 

Indiana is essentially an agricultural State. 

It is divided into small farms, averaging one hundred three acres, all 
of which are in the hands of private ownership. 

An average of ninety-two per cent, of all these farms is improved, 
leaving less than ninety-one acres of forest land to each farm. 

The economic conditions confronting the owners ; the high price of 
farm products and nearness to the markets which make farm land worth 
more than forest land ; and the ignorance of the owner of forest manage- 
ment, combine to cause the neglect of the practice of forestry in Indiana. 

I have interviewed many land owners and all agree that something 
should be done to provide a future supply of timber for Indiana. They 
claim that they cannot afford to practice forestry on their small hold- 
ings under the present economic conditions, and that the State should 
own the forest land. 

Since the condition of the public mind is in favor of State owned forests, 
I would recommend that the State at once purchase a sufficient area to 
provide for the future supply of timber, and that the same be paid for by 
a bond issue to mature in from fifty to one hundred years. (Applause) 

Some announcements were made by the Secretary. 

ADJOURNMENT. 



WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SESSION. 

The meeting was called to order at 2 :00 p. m., with Dr. F. W. Shepard- 
son presiding. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The convention will please come to order. The 
gentleman who presided this morning has been obliged to fill another 
engagement and the committee in charge has asked me to assume the chair 
this afternoon. I am going to ask Mr. Sauers to read us a letter that he 
received from Mr. B. A. Johnson. 

MR. CHARLES G. SAUERS: (Reading letter) 

"When Charles G. Sauers, wi-iting for Richard Lieber, Director of 
Conservation of the State of Indiana, addressed me a letter on September 
28th, he expressed himself in the last paragraph of his communication in 
a heartfelt and direct manner which has led me to believe that he meant 
it, and which furnished me a text for the shortest possible communication 
that I can write you on this subject. 

"Mr. Sauers said : 'Will you address this conference upon the subject 
of Co-operation Between the Lumberman and the Forester?' We realize 
that it is possibly a rather delicate subject but know that you have the 
situation well in mind and believe that you can handle it to the best 
advantage. Will you make this address and will you also arrange your 
plans to be at the conference throughout the two days? Questions will 
be constantly coming up which you will be best able to answer and your 
presence will be of great aid. We cannot take no for an answer because 
you are needed.* 



20 

"I do not consider that this matter of a discussion of the relations 
between the lumberman and the forester is a delicate subject. I am 
much of the opinion that there has been altogether too much diplomacy 
and preservation of ethics, and altogether too much of an endeavor upon 
the part of both sides of this discussion to handle the subject vpith wool 
lined and heavy gloves — rather than going at the matter with hammer and 
saw and ax. 

"We have all hedged about this affair with an altogether too nice, and 
lady-like an attitude to get very far with such a subject. 

"The forester, being a man of the schools cleverly and fully educated, 
desiring more to see his formulas worked out and his ethics paramount 
than coiild be described by 'money in the till' as measuring the result 
of work well done, being a man of a profession which never contemplated 
the amassing of money as denoting success in life, has failed to recognize 
the very opposite attributes of the lumberman. Of course this is not true 
of all foresters and neither does it matter whether it is true or not, provid- 
ing the forester has deported himself in such a surface way as to carry 
a conviction of this attitude to the mind of the lumberman. 

"I maintain that this Is the basic cause for the lumberman's opposition 
to the forester, whether the forester has been able to see the condition or 
not. The forester is highly specialized in his grasp of forestry and all it 
means to him, but he is not highly specialized and has a very extremely 
marked lack of information as to the effect his attitude naturally must 
have upon the lumberman. 

"This statement of mine is carefully thought out and deliberately made 
with no desire to be 'delicate' and with only a desire to 'know the truth' 
because the Bible says 'the truth shall set ye free' ; and the query I want to 
make is, 'do we not wish above all things, freedom?' 

"In any reference I make to lumbermen and their attitude toward for- 
esters, I do not refer to lumbermen as a class, but to the majority of 
lumbermen, to the very large and overwhelming majority of lumbermen, 
for there are many lumbermen, of course, who have butted their way 
through '!ootball wedges and conscientiously worked their way through 
university courses, whether approaching them from the necessity of 
doing janitor work to pay for their matriculation or from the 'Gold 
Coast' of some opulent eastern university, riding to their class rooms in 
foreign-born runabouts. 

"Now the majority of lumbermen do not lumber out of books, and have 
a clean cut inherited opinion of the rights of property as set down in 
the constitution of the United States. His trees belong to him to have 
and to hold and to cut as he pleases. While it is altogether probable that 
the great public has something to say about all this thing of 'a national 
timberland policy for the United States' the majority of lumbermen have 
not considered the great public as having anything to do with their busi- 
ness any more than they have an interest in the great public's business 
and very naturally, resent anybody telling them what they shall do with 
their trees quite as much as any man would resent public interference with 
the amount of money he should use for his personal pleasure or what 
style of car he should drive or where he should bapU W§ ffon^y OF Wfi{^t 
type of woman he should choose for hU wife, 



1 



21 

"Up to within a very few years, and even up to within a very few 
months, the majority of the lumbermen of the land have not known or 
cared much or believed much concerning the, possible will of the people, 
as discussed in soviet and Bolshevik proganda, either academically or 
in fact. 

"The great majority of lumbermen have not very seriously considered 
that the base of their property is something emanating from the public 
domain and that theirs is a so-called 'wasting industry.' 

"The majority of the lumbermen of the United States realize that they 
are misunderstood and brow beaten by the public press, by bureaucratic 
Washington, by government and by public opinion, and they resent it 
and they have never yet been able to organize a machine to fight it and 
they never will. 

"I could name one hundred fifty lumbermen, giving their initials and 
home addresses, without misspelling a name or giving a wrong location 
where those lumbermen might be found ordinarily, which list when it 
had been compiled, would contain the names and addresses of practically 
all of the high class lumbermen in the United States who had ever 
made a call of courtesy or one of business in a voluntary way on the 
Forest Service in Washington, or who had any knowledge or any care 
for the wonderful institution that the Forest Service is, as it is now 
housed and now functions in the Atlantic Building in our national Capitol. 

"Lumbermen generally, that is the majority of lumbermen, know a 
great deal more about the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison than 
they do about the Forest Service at Washington, but they have no real 
patience with scientific affairs as a whole. They are not interested in 
effciency diagram, or especially in statistics, but are deeply and partic- 
ularly interested in the advancement in public favor of the particular 
wood which is in the till at the end of the year. 

"This attitude does not under any circumstances establish the fact 
that the lumberman is ignorant, far from it. He is like Barney Fagan's 
'high born lady' — born that way. 

"Yes, I know the above statement needs explanation for it is a state- 
ment and not an argument, a statement of facts, a hurdle set up in your 
way, all ye organizers wherever ye are dispersed. 

"God never made any two trees alike and he made many species of 
trees — all the varieties of fir and hemlock, pine and hardwoods, each with 
its special attribute and never any common denominator of value, .but 
the false and fiated denominator of the 'so much per thousand feet' ; 
and there never was any one thousand foot pile of lumber which had 
the same exact value of any other one thousand foot pile of lumber, even 
if it all came out of the same tree and same log and all was cut to one 
particular dimension ; and therein are the differences that beset any man 
who endeavors to make the lumbermen of the United States all of a sim- 
ilar opinion upon any subject. 

"Manufacturing methods differ in great measure with each species of 
wood manufactured and one locality with another. For this reason there 
is no nationally or internationally known unit of value in lumber. 

♦'A pig Of Irou is a pig of iron at Gary, at JJonglJOiig, on the Thames 



22 

embankment;, or In the Gogebic range. A bushel of wheat, with but little 
difference in grade, is comparable with all other bushels of wheat, whether 
situated in North Dakota or by the edge of the Black Sea, but one thousand 
feet of lumber is not like any other one thousand feet of lumber that 
ever has been or will be, when it comes to giving it a value, and therein 
is the reason why there are so many manufacturers' associations in the 
lumber trade, and why those manufacturers' associations have up to date 
paid vastly more attention to making the lumber consuming world con- 
scious of the fact that their lumber is better than any other lumber, 
and have paid so little attention to what any government bureau or any 
scientific man in the bureau, or out of it, may consider to be the proper 
treatment of his raw product, whether it be in the pile or in the forest. 

"The analytical forest service man and independent forester and 
scientific lumberman will get a fundamental truth out of these words 
without boiling them even to a fever heat, or into an epigram, and yet 
this is not pessimism, this is only the truth, and I wish you would all 
try and make the most of it. For, along the lines of truth are the 
gateways to co-operation, co-ordination, solidarity, and upon no other 
basis can you figure out a practical national lumber policy for the 
United States, and you never will figure out such a policy until you 
learn to jump all these hurdles without tripping. 

"How will you do this thing? Keep your associations of all lumber- 
men, of all classes, going at even speed ahead. Try and believe that you 
are all in the same boat, under orders for the same port, and don't rock it. 
Keep up an everlasting discussion of this subject and bring constructive 
suggestions to the forum of the Lumber World Review or to any other 
forum, where free speech and honest thought is tolerated 'in this land of 
the free and home of the brave' and remember that the student who lives 
in an apartment and likes it has as much right to an opinion as the man 
who has several million dollars in the bank ; and probably, sometimes, you 
will reach a conclusion, but it will not any of it be done that will be 
worth while unless the rights of all concerned are considered. 

"BoLLiNG Arthur Johnson, 

"Editor and Publisher, 
"Lumber World Review." 

The Chairman apiwinted the following as the Resolutions Committee : 

Richard Lieber, Chairman, Indianapolis 

E. M. Stotlar, Illinois 

Findlay Torrence, Ohio 

Dr. F. W. Shepardson, Illinois 

W. A. Snyder, Ohio 

J. G. Peters, Washington 

C. H. Kramer, Indiana 

P. S. Ridsale, Washington 

THE CHAIRMAN : This morning our thoughts were turned toward 
the forest situation in these three states. You must have noted with a 



28 

marked degree of interest as each man presented a paper looking at the 
situation from a different angle and each gave us something well worth 
our consideration and careful thought. 

This afternoon we are to turn away for a while from state lines to 
consider the subject from a national point of view. Our general subject is 
"National Forestry Policy". The first speaker is known the country over 
because of his work in the field. I want to introduce to you Lieutenant- 
Colonel Henry S. Graves, Forester of the United States, who will talk 
upon the forestry situation. (Applause) 

LT.-COL. HENRY S. GRAVES: Ladies and gentlemen, thev forest 
situation is of peculiar interest to Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. All three 
states have a pressing problem in the production of home grown forests. 
They are also vitally concerned in the forest situation in other parts of 
the country, for they are large consumers of lumber and other wood prod- 
ucts and already the greater part of what they use is brought in from 
other states. 

At this time public attention is focused on the forest question as never 
before. This is due partly to the lessons of the war, which have empha- 
sizd the national importance of all of our natural resources ; it is due 
also to the very high prices of lumber and of articles manufactured from 
wood, to difliculties in obtaining certain raw products in adequate quan- 
tities, and to local consequences of forest destruction that are making 
themselves felt in an increasing degree. 

This conference is very significant, for it represents, to my mind, an 
inquiry on the part of the public as to how our forests are being 
handled — whether they are being safeguarded and perpetuated, and if 
not, what constructive plans are in contemplation to meet the situation. 

Tlie Service of Forest. Forests render an indispensable service in three 
ways: 

(a) In the production of materials for construction and for the man- 
ufacture of a multitude of articles essential in the industries and in our 
every-day life. 

(b) In the utilization of land that would otherwise be idle, thus 
making possible the maintenance of local industries and the building 
up of communities. 

(c) In the protection of mountain slopes, the conservation of sources 
of water, and the provision of other general public benefits. 

The central states are interested in forests and forestry in all three of 
these aspects. In some ways the problems of forestry are more pressing 
in this region than in some other sections, and if the citizens of these 
states wish their various industrial needs to be met, it is essential that they 
interest themselves in our forest problems in both their local and national 
phases. 

Conditions in the Central States. Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, together 
with the neighboring portions of Michigan and Wisconsin, constitute 
the most important center of wood manufacturing industries in the 
country, that is the industries making vehicles, furniture, railway cars, 
tools, planing-mill products, and the like. About one-third of the total 
capital invested and about one-third of the wage earners in the wood- 



24 

manufacturing industries of the country are in this section. And the 
lumber consumed amounts to five and one-half billion feet a year, or about 
a quarter of the aggregate used in this country for such enterprises. 

Of the approximately three and one-third billion feet of material that 
goes into the wood-using manufactures of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio 
alone, nearly one and one-half billion feet are in the form of hardwoods 
native to and formerly abundant in these states. In fact, it was the 
large supply of superior oals, hickory, maple, ash, yellow poplar, and 
walnut that led to the establishment of many of the wood manufactures 
in the early days. 

Twenty years ago Indiana led all the states in the quantity of hard- 
wood lumber cut. At that time the state produced more lumber than 
it used. Since then the forests have been rapidly cut away to supply 
the industries and to make way for agriculture, so that the annual cut is 
now only about a quarter of what it was then. 

About half of the wood material now used by the Indiana industries 
comes from species native to the State, but about two-thirds of this 
hardwood material is imported from other states. As long ago as 1911 
only about twenty per cent of the walnut used in Indiana came from its 
own forests, about a quarter of the yellow poplar and hickory, a third of 
the basswood, forty per cent of the hard maple and forty-three per cent 
of the oak. The showing today would be still more unfavorable. 

In Illinois the wood-using industries use about one and three-fourths 
billion feet of lumber, of which about one-third is hardwood of species 
native to the State. The industries, however, have to import over ninety 
per cent, of this hardwood material. Ohio is somewhat better off than 
Illinois, being able to produce about a quarter of the hardwoods used 
in her wood manufacturing industries. 

Dependence on Other States. The situation in hardwoods, however, 
constitutes only one phase of the problem. These states within the hard- 
wood belt of the country and their production of softwoods is and always 
was relatively small. For general construction lumber they must look 
to other sources of supply. And here we have a demand not only from the 
wood manufacturing industries, but also from all other consumers who 
use lumber for various general purposes, including the great number of 
shippers who need material for boxes, crates, and other containers. 

Among the consumers of lumber, too, are representatives of the greatest 
wood consuming group in the country — the farmers. Though the farms in 
the central states have better and more adequate buildings than those 
in many other regions, nevertheless the needs for building material, now 
and in the future, of the farmers in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio must be 
borne in mind in considering either a local or a national policy of forestry. 

These facts raise two very important questions : First, what can these 
states do in the way of production of wood by growth; and, second, what is 
the situation in the rest of the country regarding forest supplies? 

Today the home product does not nearly meet the annual requirements, 
and the cutting that is done far exceeds what is grown each year. It is 
probable, from the best estimates that I have been able to secure, that 
the annual growth of material of potential value in the three states is 



25 

not over one-quarter of what is cut each year. This means that the 
forests are progressively losing ground with considerable rapidity. 

This deficit is due only in part to the clearing of land for agriculture. 
It is due also to the failure to handle the lands in a way to secure good 
reproduction and properly to protect the young trees that become estab- 
lished. With better care and management the forest lands of these states 
should yield from two to three times the present growth, and this would, 
I believe, be possible without cheeking the extension of cultivation over 
lands suited to that purpose. 

These central states should not, however, consider that their respon- 
sibility ceases with promoting the production of home grown timber. Even 
with that production, it will be necessary to look to other sources for a 
large part of the annual requirements of the industries, of the farmers, 
and of other consumers. If these states complacently expect that there 
will be an indefinite supply in the general market of the kind of material 
they have been securing, they will be gravely disillusioned, unless the 
present methods of handling forests are changed. They may not be able 
to act directly in altering conditions outside their own boundaries. Where 
interstate interests are involved the nation itself must take the leadership 
and direction. Individual states may, however, express their demand for 
the protection of their industrial interests and support the government in 
the necessary action to secure it. 

The 'National Problem. We have throughout our history drawn chiefly 
upon the original forest growth for the bulk of the material used in the 
industries. Though in certain localities we are now beginning to use 
second growth for certain purposes, most of the lumber in the general 
market comes from so-called original growth, that is, from trees one hun- 
dred and fifty to two hundred and fifty years old. As one region has been 
exhausted railroads have been extended into new centers and material in 
abundance has been furnished the general market. After the softwoods 
of the northeast and the lake states were largely cut, we looked to the 
southern pine forests, and the country felt secure in the knowledge that 
there are still large quantities of timber on the Pacific Coast. Many 
economists still think in terms of our original supplies, largely ignoring 
the high prices that result from the transport of material for two or three" 
thousand miles, ignoring the consequences of the withdrawal of competition 
from the older and more accessible sources of supplies, ignoring the 
effect on communities of exhausting the resource that has constituted the 
chief basis of their industrial prosperity. All these, and other matters too, 
must be included in considering the economic problems of forests and 
forestry. 

The lumber industry has been built up to exploit old growth timber. 
The belief that there is a plentiful supply left somewhere further on has 
made the country complacent, and the result is that our forests have 
been cut without reference to restocking with new growth. The interest 
in protection has been chiefly centered on the old growth timber. Little 
progress has been made in restoring to productiveness lands laid waste 
by destructive lumbering and fire. 

The consequence is that most of the eastern states are in a position 



26 

analogous to Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. They are drawing upon other 
states for a large part of their requirements, the amount cut each 
year is two to three times what is produced by growth in the home 
forests, and there is an increasing area of wasted lands unfit for cultiva- 
tion and that might be producing forests. Prices are very high, partly 
because of the same factors that influence the price of other commodities, 
partly because the lumber is brought from greater distances or from less 
accessible areas that require expensive logging operations. 

Difficulties are already being encountered in securing raw material of 
the character and in the quantity desired. Many of our newsprint 
paper mills of the east find increasing embarrassment for pulp wood 
within reasonable shipping distance. Some concerns will probably have 
to close, or move to the west. 

The HardAjcood Situation. Perhaps the most serious situation exists in 
the matter of hardwood supplies. In the case of softwoods there is a much 
greater reserve supply left than with hardwoods. Moreover, one species 
of softwood may be more readily substituted for another previously used, 
than in the case of hardwoods. 

The quantities of original hardwood growth in the Appalachians, the 
Ozarks, and southern valleys are less than iwpularly supposed. Most 
of the bodies of timber suited to major lumber operations are already 
placed, and the majority of operators say that they have not more than ten 
to fifteen years' supply ahead. Estimates of the available supplies of old 
timber show that most of our better grades of first growth poplar, basswood 
ash, and walnut will last but fifteen to twenty years, and of oak but 
little longer. 

This in itself would not be alarming if there were a crop of younger 
growth coming on. We find that our old reserve of virgin hardwoods is 
being rapidly depleted. This is inevitable. But unfortunately it is not 
being replaced in any adequate degree. Not only is there almost no 
effort to secure a replacement, but fires still burn over the lands, destroy- 
ing what nature may establish and preventing natural seeding. 

The hardwood industries must look in the future to two sources of 
supply : The mountain regions, such as the Appalachians and Ozarks, 
where there are large areas of land suited only to tree growth, and to 
the smaller tracts of land unsuited to cultivation within the farming 
country. We are failing to secure adequate forest replacement and 
growth in both these natural sources of future supply. 

Our hardwood forests are progi-essively deteriorating. Some sort of 
vegetation follows cutting as a rule in the hardwood region, but it is 
very commonly of poor species, scanty, and of poor form, having but 
little potential value. 

Other countries are looking to the United States for hardwoods. 
Russia, Finland, and Scandinavia may largely supply the deficit of western 
Europe for softwoods, but there will be a constant demand by Europe 
for our hardwoods if we have the supply. We are not today producing 
by growth enough to meet our own future needs for hardwoods, let alone" 
the needs of other countries. 

The General Situation. In the main the problem of a supply of soft- 



2? 

wood lnmb©r is less serious than of Iiardwoorts, becaiise there is a much 
greater reserve supply of old timber. The coniferous forests are not, how- 
ever, being handled materially better than the hardwoods, and the damage 
by fire is much greater. We have not yet mastered the fires. The 
coniferous forests are in the main cut without reference to their perpet- 
uation, and the replacement and growth that does occur is far below 
what is used and destroyed and only a small part of what the country 
will need in the future. 

The most serious situation in regard to softwoods is that the old 
centers of supply are being rapidly exhausted without adequate replace- 
ment and our country must depend on material brought from great dis- 
tances. The southern pine which has been a dominating factor in the 
market for a number of years is already yielding to Pacific Coast lumber 
in many places. This tendency will increase, for most of the old growth 
yellow pine will be cut within fifteen to twenty years. This means that 
the country is paying a constantly increasing freight bill for its lumber. 
I don't know what freight bill Indiana pays. I think New York pays 
over six million dollars a year. 

It is not sound national economy for a country of our size to have 
to draw its lumber supplies from one section. The Atlantic States 
should not be required to obtain their lumber from three thousand miles 
away, with the high prices necessitated by the long transport. There 
should be producing forests well distributed throughout the country. It 
is of interest to the central states to have producing forests in Minnesota 
and in the south. With the rapid depletion of these older centers and the 
failure to replace them, the burdens upon the farmers and other consumers 
in the central states and the east will increase each year. 

Many have urged that we are using more lumber than is really nec- 
essary. It is urged that we can reduce our consumption of lumber and 
use other materials. We might become a cement using nation like the 
Mediterranean countries. We learned to do without a good many things 
in the war. But that does not signify that it would react to our public 
welfare to do so in peace times. Our consumption will decline if lumber 
becomes so high priced as to be out of reach of the ordinary buyer. If 
it is available, however, our total consumption will not decline; it will, 
in my opinion, rise in the future. 

Europe is often cited as requiring a constantly smaller quantity of 
lumber. In England the total consumption of lumber from 1851 to 1911 
increased five-fold. Its per capita consumption was in 1911 three times 
what it had been sixty years before. 

It is not necessary for us to become a cement using nation. It is not 
necessary for us to close our wood using plants. It is not necessary for 
the farmers and other consumers to use other materials when they prefer 
wood as a better and more convenient material for many purposes. It is 
not necessary for our nation to be deprived of a material that in the war 
proved to be an absolute necessity for a multitude of uses. For we have 
enough land for forest productibn that is of little or no value for anything 
else, and will not be used for anything else. Some have estimated that 
we have fifty to one hundred million acres of such lands that already 



tave been reduced to waste and today lie idle and unproductivow I ani 
speaking, of course, of conditions where the bulk of the land, or a con- 
siderable part of it, is porous and suited only to the growing of forests. 
We can meet our forest needs if only we will stop the destructive processes 
that are now in vogue and employ wholly practical methods to secure 
forest renewal. 

Forestry the Solution. The solution of our forestry problem con- 
sists in stopping the destruction by fire and other agencies, in using 
methods that make possible natural reproduction after logging, and in 
the restocking by tree growth of lands that have been made economic 
wastes. The fear has been expressed by some that such an objective would 
conflict with the expansion of agriculture and stock raising. Exactly the 
contrary would be the result. No sane program of forestry would propose 
the use of lands for forestry that are better adapted to agriculture and 
settlement. Forestry, agriculture, and stock raising go hand in hand. 
They are complementary. It is possible to point to numerous circum- 
stances and cases where destructive handling of forests retards agricul- 
tural development. We can show in the same way how the right handling 
of forests with protection and replacement is a factor, and often the prin- 
cipal factor, in building up agriculture that otherwise would follow 
very slowly or be indefinitely held back. 

Public Aspects of Forestry. The problem of forestry has both a na- 
tional and a local aspect. The nation is concerned in the country-wide 
securing and distributing of raw materials for the varying needs of differ- 
ent regions, and in the protective service of forests on interstate rivers. 
The states and localities are interested in the support of local industries, 
in local protective benefits of forests, and in having lands productive 
and a basis for support of the communities. 

W'e have today something like one hundred and sixty million acres 
of public forests. These should be, I believe, practically doubled. We 
have been carrying on a moderate program of purchases, having acquired 
in the last two years two million acres in the east. The public benefits of 
productive forests justify the participation of the public in working out 
the problem. The character of the problem is such as to make public 
participation absolutely necessary. It is one in which the nation, the 
states, the communities, and private owners must each play an important 
part. 

The emphasis in recent years on public forests has given the impres- 
sion that our forest question was being solved. Our National Forests 
are rendering a great public benefit. They are under protection and their 
resources are being used in a way to insure their perpetuation and con- 
tinued service to the communities and the nation. Their timber already 
provides a large part of the local demand in a number of the western states 
and will increasingly be used for general needs of the country. But they 
are not extensive enough nor well enough distributed to meet more 
than part of the country's needs for forests. At present the timber cut 
from them constitutes about three per cent of the entire lumber consump- 
tion of the '?ountry. The rest comes from private lands. As the private 
timber of the west becomes exhausted they will be of increasing importance 



2§ 

as a reserve for the general market. It is obvious that even with a greatly 
extended program of acqui«Uion of public forests we must still look to 
private forests, exactly as utaer countries do, for a part of our future 
forest supplies. 

The problem of forestry requires action both by the public and by 
private owners. I would emphasize especially the production of old 
growth lumber of special quality. The public should assume a much larger 
share of the burden of forestry than it does today, both in acquiring 
and managing larger areas of publicly owned forests and in aiding private 
owners to protect their lands and to secure forest replacement. 

Responsibility of Private Ovmers. The entire burden of forestry shoiild 
not, however, be assumed by the public. Private proprietorship of land 
carries with it certain definite responsibilities that owners can not escape. 
They have the duty of handling their lands in such a way as not to injure 
others or the general public. The turning of forest lands into a waste as 
is now being done on a very extensive scale is a very great injury to the 
public. These destructive practices can be condoned only on the ground 
that the public has complacently permitted them and has not furnished 
the aid and direction that are needed in getting constructive measures 
of a practical character into actual practice. 

The character of the problem of forestry is such that the private 
owner unaided has great difficulty even in securing adequate protection, 
let alone the renewal after cutting. The public must, therefore, share the 
responsibility for the present situation that has resulted from destructive 
methods. If, however, the public does its part, it may require owners to 
handle their lands in such a way that an unproductive waste will not 
follow in the wake of their operations. 

l^eed of a Naiioiml Policy. The situation clearly calls for the adoption 
of a broad and far-reaching policy for the nation ; a policy in which 
objectives are clearly defined, the responsibilities of the public and of 
private land owners are recognized, the activities of both the public and 
private owners brought into correlation, and a practical legislative and 
administrative program outlined. 

On various occasions during the last eight months I have set forth 
what I believe to be the principles that should underlie such a policy. 
Time does not permit on this occasion a discussion of all its details, but 
a brief outline will indicate its chief features. 

A National Policy Outlined. (1) Public Forests. A national policy 
of forestry should provide first of all for an extensive program of publicity 
owned forests, owned in part by the federal government, in part by 
the states, and in part by municipalities, and by quasi-public institutions 
and organizations. At the present time the public owns about twenty-five 
per cent of the country's forests. This should be extended to fully forty 
or fifty per cent. 

The federal holdings should be extended by purchase, by exchange of 
stumpage for cut-over lands, by additions to the National Forests of land 
now in the unreserved public domain. It should be the aim to include 
areas needed for the protection of, watersheds, for the prevention of 
erosion for recreation and other general public purposes. Cut-over 



so 

lands should be acquired for the additional pux'pose of future production 
of lumber and other products, and of establishing demonstration areas 
and centers of federal co-operation with states and private owners. These 
federal forests should be distributed in all forest regions of the country. 

The states should establish public forests with the same general 
objectives as the federal forests and with special reference to the local 
economic and industrial needs. Several of our states have already outlined 
a definite program of acquisition towai'd which they are working as fast 
as money can be supplied. Thus the officers of Pennsylvania, which 
already own over one million acres, have a program for acquiring over 
four million acres more. New York has an ambitious program and is 
adding to her forests rapidly. Massachusetts is endeavoring to secure 
some two hundred and fifty thousand acres, and other states are making 
progress along the same line. Indiana has made an excellent beginning. 
It is hoped that it will be possible to secure the dunes for a great recre- 
ation park, and I hope that the movement also may extend to acquiring 
larger public areas within the other forest regions of the State. The 
establishment of well located state forests in Illinois and Ohio would 
greatly stimulate the interest in forestry and aid in securing better hand- 
ling of private woods. 

Every encouragement should also be given to municipalities to acquire 
public forests and woodland parks. The municipality or community forest 
is a great factor in Euroi^ean countries. Their benefit has been con- 
spicuously demonstrated. Many cities and towns in this country already 
have public woodlnads. The movement should be greatly extended. 

Private Forests. The safeguarding and perpetuation of forests on 
private lands are possible through an organized system of fire protection, 
through the prohibition of destructive processes that produce waste lands, 
and through the promotion of constructive and entirely practical measures 
of forestry. The participation, liberal co-operation and direction of the 
public in working out the problems involved is essential to success. 

Fire Protection. Effective fire protection is achieved only through a 
joint undertaking between public and private agencies in which all 
lands, regardless of ownership, are brought under an organized system. 
Necessarily conditions in different states vary widely. In these central 
states the requirements are quite different from those in Minnesota, 
Oregon, Maine, or Louisiana. 

In general there should be incorporated in the forest laws of the State 
requirements to bring all forest owners into the protective system, and 
to extend it to all cut-over and unimproved lands in the State not needed 
for agriculture, together with the disposal, by lopping or burning, of 
dangerous slashings and other si)ecial measures that the local conditions 
may require. 

There should be provided by the State the administrative machinery 
necessary to carry out the work effectively. 

The public should share in the burden of protection. The division 
of cost will necessarily vary in different states, as is now the case 
among those states which have inaugurated such a system. The public 
may properly bear the cost of the State-wide patrol system, including 



31 

overhead, inspection, look-outs, and similar items, and a portion of the 
fire suppression costs. 

In general, the cost of the preventive system should be shared about 
equally between the public and the owner of the land. At the present 
time assistance by the states and the efforts of the private owners alike 
are inadequate. Measures like brush disposal are essentially a part of 
the logging operation and should be a charge against it. 

The Federal Government should grant liberal aid in fire protection, 
far greater than at present. Its aid should be contingent on the State's 
inaugurating and carrying out such a system as alcove described. This 
financial help should not exceed in amount that appropriated by the State. 

I think that the Federal Government should grant a much larger 
co-operation than they have heretofore. We have been distributing about 
one hundred thousand dollars to meet the conditions of the Federal law. 
This, of course, is very small. We have a national problem and I believe 
that the national government should provide liberally to aid the states, 
making the aid contingent on acts by the states. 

Protection Against Insects and Diseases. As in fire protection, the 
spread of dangerous insect infestations and diseases requires the aid and 
direction of the public. Both the national and State governments should 
participate and appropriate liberally to check the depredations. 

Fwest Renewal. The renewal of forests on lands not required for 
agriculture and settlement is an essential feature of a national policy 
of forestry and an effective program should be worked out in each state, 
backed by appropriate legislation and efficient administration, which will 
achieve this object on private as well as on public property. As in the 
case of fire protection, forest renewal on private lands require the partici- 
pation and aid of the public. 

There are two problems of forest renewal : First, the restocking of 
lands already cut over and now in a condition of waste ; and, second, 
providing for natural reproduction as the timber is cut. 

Probably the only way to secure a restocking of cut-over waste lands is 
for them to be replanted. Michigan is pursuing the policy of replanting, 
and a number of other states are beginning to follow that example. Where 
there are still seed-bearing trees on cut-over lands, or seed in the ground, 
continued fire protection may often suffice for restocking. Where there 
Is no chance for natural reproduction, planting or sowing will be necessary. 
The public will have to take over a large portion of the cut-over lands and 
restore them to productivity. In many cases, however, owners may be 
Induced to restock their waste lands as a business undertaking. 

Provision for forest renewal should be made at the time of cutting. 
Sufficient restocking of the average private tract can be secured by natural 
measures. On certain types of forests, forest renewal will result from 
fire protection alone. In many instances, however, where exploitation is 
unrestricted fire protection alone does not suffice to secure renewal and to 
prevent the lands becoming waste. 

If protection alone does not suffice to secure forest reproduction, the 
owners should be required to adopt such additional measures as may be 
necessary to accomplish this, with co-operative aid by the public in work- 



32 

ing out the problem as a practical undertaking. As in the case of fire 

protection, the additional measures necessary for forest renewal should 
be made a part of a systematic program in which the public and private 
owners engage in a joint undertaking with a common objective. 

The first steps in this undertaking are to determine in each region : 

1. The circumstances under which fire protection alone will not suffice 
to prevent wasting of the land under prevailing methods of lumbering. 

2. The additional measures necessary to secure conditions favorable 
for natural renewal. 

3. The classes of land upon which forest growth should be continued. 

4. The co-operation that should be given by the public to make 
feasible in practice the measures that it may be necessary for the owners 
to take. 

5. The legislation needed to bring these measures into practice as a 
part of the State's program of forestry. 

Special Proilems in the Central States. In the states of Illinois, Indi- 
ana and Ohio, our problem is essentially one of the farm woodland. Here 
we have to do with small tracts and small operations. In some ways the 
problem is a simpler one than in the great lumber regions. In the first 
place the fire danger is easily controlled. Then again the work can usu- 
ally be brought into close correlation with other phases of farm manage- 
ment. Of great value also is the fact that the owner himself is often the 
manager and can give personal direction to the work of forestry. 

In such circumstances the aid of the states may be directed to educating 
the farmer in how to cut his woodland in order to secure natural reproduc- 
tion, how to thin the young stands so as to increase their growth and 
value, how to reforest the lands now waste, how best to market his wood- 
land products, and so on. Advice should be afforded through the State 
Forester and the agricultural field agents. Planting stock should be 
offered at cost, with assistance in establishing plantations. Co-operative 
marketing enterprises should be encouraged when this is practical. 

Puilic Assistance to Private Owners. As already explained, the public 
should aid private owners in organized fire protection, in giving direct 
advice in regard to the methods of handling their properties, and in furn- 
ishing planting material at cost. 

In many parts of the country the present form of taxation is acting 
as a detriment to owners' handling the forests conservatively and it even 
tends to force premature and wasteful cutting. In general, the form of 
taxation that should be substituted is to levy an annual tax on the land 
and a yield tax on the timber when it is cut. Each state should give this 
problem careful study and provide a form of taxation that will encourage 
the owners to grow trees on their cut-over and waste land. The Federal 
Government may well give assistance to the states in this study. 

Further assistance could with propriety be given by extending to forests 
the existing legislation providing for farm loans so as to include loans 
for the purchase and improvement of forest lands, to encourage the holding 
of lands previously acquired, where the purpose of the owner is to hold 
and protect cut-over lands or those having growing timber, to reforest 
lands by seeding or planting, or to use other measures in promoting forest 
production. 



33 

Other measures of co-operation and aid would include research in 
forestry and forest products, land classification, obtaining and diffusing 
information regarding our forest resources and industrial conditions. Of 
special importance is a comprehensive survey of the forest resources of 
the country, to determine the quantities of existing timber suited to differ- 
ent industrial uses, the current and future requirements of different regions, 
the possible production of our forests by growth, and other matters that 
would aid in developing a national policy of forestry. 

Function of the Federal Gove7-nnient. The Federal Government has a 
function not only in owning and administering the National Forests ; it 
should take the leadership in formulating a national policy that includes 
the right handling of private forests. The Federal Government alone" can 
act effectively to bring about concurrent action as between the states. 
Its research and educational work may be directed to the problems of 
the nation and of regions that comprise more than one state. It can 
stimulate and guide local action where the states acting individually would 
fail. The Government is in a position to organize all agencies affected by 
the forest problem in a united effort to carry out a program of forestry. 

The legislation directly affecting the private owner in the protection and 
renewal of forests may best be by the states if they will only take the 
action. The Government should aid the states in formulating plans and 
developing methods and should give direct financial assistance in carrying 
them out. 

The Federal Government has not given adequate assistance to the 
states. It has helped to some extent in fire protection and research. One 
hundred thousand dollars a year is now distributed to states qualifying 
under the law to receive it, for organized protective work. This principle 
of assistance should be greatly extended both in amount for protective 
work and in scope to include other lines of forest activities. 

The direct aid of the states by the government, made contingent on 
adoption by the former of acceptable programs of forest legislation and 
administration, would help to secure concurrent action in different states 
and would make possible the standardization of methods, and the achieve- 
ment of results impossible without such aid. 

The first step in inaugurating a national policy of forestry is a federal 
law providing the authority to co-operate with the states in formulating 
and carrying out a program of forestry along the lines indicated in this 
statement ; and carrying an appropriation that can be used to assist such 
states as inaugurate and put into effect a program determined to be ade- 
quate by the Secretary of Agriculture. 

A great deal can be accomplished pending such substantial co-operation, 
but with the aid that the nation might offer, results could be accomplished 
that otherwise would be impossible. 

I may say that there are some people who do not agree that the program 
of forestry should be carried out through the states. I have, however, 
undertaken and proposed a program of very greatly increased activities 
by -the states, backed up both in the matter of assistance in carrying it out, 
and by a large appropriation, without which the states themselves can not 
possibly get the work under way. (Applause) 



34 

THE CHAIRMAN: I have observed your close attention as our na- 
tional forester gave to us this illuminating paper. Many of the points 
which Colonel Graves has raised here, are to be considered in special 
papers. I am sure that some of you would like to ask some questions. 
There will be an opportunity later in the afternoon for this. The next 
speaker is Mr. J. G. Peters, whose subject is "Co-operation Between 
Federal Govei-nment and States." (Applause) 

MR. J. G. TETEIIS : Ladies and gentlemen, the program which Colonel 
Graves has presented is very practical. Perhaps the most important 
feature of it is co-operation, and that is the feature I shall deal with, 
especially as it applies to the states and the Federal Government. 

The progress of any forestry program will depend, in general, upon 
the extent of co-operation between the private owner, the State, and the 
Fedei-al Government. Each has an obligation, and each must realize this 
in an adequate way before the timber supply problem can begin to be 
solved. In other words, to face the question in a practical manner, the 
success of the undertaking is going to vary with the amount of money 
available, for upon this depends whether we shall continue to go along 
with the customary meager funds and relatively small accomplishment, or 
whether we shall take hold in man fashion and strive to have something 
to show for our efforts in the next generation that will really be worth 
while . This requires adequate appropriations by the Federal Government 
and the states and adequate participation on the part of private forest 
owners. 

The Federal Government by reason of its centralized authority and 
its ability to raise funds is the natural leader in such a movement and 
should, of course, give liberal financial assistance. It has started in cer- 
tain lines in a small way. With a larger public demand, that is bound to 
be made, congress will be obliged to take the necessary adequate action. 

The interest of the Federal Government is very great. Not only must 
it protect and manage its own forest lands, the National Forests, but by 
reason of the general character of the problems of timber supply and 
water conservation, which affect the entire nation, it also should assist 
in pi'otecting and encouraging timber production on other lands. Consider 
this with reference to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois and the rest 
of the Middle West. None of these states has an adequate timber supply ; 
they alone can not furnish their timber needs. It is a matter of concern 
to them how these needs are going to be supplied and they are vitally in- 
terested in what other states may do. They are interested, too, in seeing 
the Government extend its aid to them and other states and strive to insure 
all the states timber for the future. 

The most important lines of co-operation between the Government and 
the states, where co-operative effort is almost essential if results commen- 
surate with our needs are to be obtained, include the following : 

(1) Acquisition of public forests. 

(2) Protection against forest fires. 

(3) Reforestation of denuded lands, 
('i) Conservative cutting. 

(5) Farm forestry. 



35 

besides these there are other forest activities which either the Federal 
Government or the states have been conducting independently, such as 
an investigation of the forest tax problem, a survey of forest resources, 
land classification, and research. There is no question whatever about 
their importance, but co-operative effort in carrying the work on is not 
essential, although in some instances it would be beneficial. 

One of the chief features of any forest program must be the acquisition 
by the public of lands unsuited for agriculture or settlement. It is esti- 
mated that the area of such lands now in public ownership should be 
doubled, that is, we should strive for an ultimate area of some three lum- 
dred million acres. National Forests now aggregate one hundred fifty-five 
million acres; and state forests about four million, nearly three-fourths 
of which is held by two states — New York and Pennsylvania. Municipal 
forest areas are negligible. Except where the lands for public forests have 
been set aside from the public domain, as has been the case with nearly 
all the National Forests and some State Forests, notably those in the Lake 
States, the acquisition of such lands has been a very slow process. The 
Federal Government has been purchasing lands for National Forest pur- 
poses since 1911 and, in this period of nearly nine years, the funds appro- 
priated have amounted to only $11,600,000 and the area acquired totals 
less than two million acres. The cost per acre has averaged about five 
dollars and twenty-five cents. The appropriation recommended for the 
current fiscal year was two million dollars ; congress cut it to six hundred 
thousand dollars. The states, with the exception of New York and Penn- 
sylvania, have done comparatively little. New York has acquired nearly 
two million acres for State Forest purposes, and has recently authorized 
an issue of seven million five hundred thousand dollars of bonds to supply 
funds for purchasing additional areas ; Pennsylvania has about one million 
acres ; Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota between three hundred thou- 
sand and four hundi-ed thousand each ; ten other states have forests ranging 
in area from sixty thousand acres to less than one thousand. 

As the bulk of the area to be acquired will necessarily have to be pur- 
chased, the cost will amount to at least three-quarters of a billion dollars. 
But at the present rate of acquisition, no material accomplishment can be 
hoped for in a long time. Especially is this the case with the states, as 
has been shown. Therefore, it is desirable not only to speed up appro- 
priations by congress and the state legislature but, at the same time, to 
devise a plan by which the Federal Government can aid the states. I 
am convinced that some co-operative plan for encouraging the states to 
adopt an adequate purchase policy is needed. I suggest that the Govern- 
ment loan to the states the necessary funds subject to the approval of the 
National Forest Reservation Commission, which is the commission that 
approves the purchase of lands for National Forests. The Government 
should obtain the funds through the issue of bonds, and the loans should 
be made on a long-term basis. The National Forest Reservation Commis- 
sion would make the actual purchases subject to the approval of the sim- 
ilar State commission, and the Government would be secured in the 
transaction by retaining title to the lands until the debt was liquidated. 
At the same time tha State would be the custodian of the property and 



S(5 

would protect and manage it and collect the receipts. The Government 
would lose nothing on such deals because it would charge the states enough 
to meet the interest payments on the bonds, and the states would thus get 
the benefit of the Government's credit and low rates of interest. States 
should not find such transactions a heavy financial burden, for the sale 
of forest products and the fees for grazing and other uses should furnish 
the money not only to pay the interest on the loans, in many cases from 
the very beginning, but also to build up a surplus to pay off the loans. 

Before passing on the next subject I might pause here to say that some 
persons, especially some of those who got alarmed over the proposal for 
a program of forestry on private lands, would have the public buy all the 
large bodies of cut-over land and would make the public practically the 
only large forest owner. Entirely aside from the questions of whether 
this would be good policy in the light of the experience of other nations 
and whether our public would approve it, the plan would not be desirable 
as meeting present needs. If what has been accomplished in public acqui- 
sition in the past is any indication of what might be expected In the future, 
it is perfectly apparent that to complete any reasonable program of acqui- 
sition will require many years. 

While it is urgent that the Federal Government and the states acquire 
public forests and properly take care of them — protect them from fire, cut 
them conservatively, reforest them, and so on, their obligation goes much 
farther. They must, at the same time, recognize their responsibility in 
encouraging the proper care of private forests, the area of which even after 
the program of acquisition has been completed will at least equal the area of 
public forests. The public has scarcely any greater obligation in forestry 
than aiding in the protection of private forests from fire. Nor is there any 
forest activity where co-operation between Government and state will bring 
quicker and better results. 

Fire protection is fundamental. It is the chief means of preserving 
timber growth to the end that forestry may be practiced and. a continu- 
ous supply of timber maintained. Adequate fire protection will undoubt- 
edly solve a large part of our forest problem. It will save timber now 
standing and it will promote natural regeneration on most cut-over lands 
after lumbering. 

Already a beginning has been made in co-operative fire protection by the 
Government and states though in a very inadequate way financially. Never- 
theless, enough has been accomplished to demonstrate the practical value 
of the co-operation, and furthermore a precedent for Federal and State 
co-operative effort in forestry has been established by the specific terms of 
a Federal law. Tliis law is the well known Weeks Act which passed con- 
gress in March, 1911. It provided for two things, the acquisition of lands 
for National Forest purposes and co-operation with states in protection 
from forest fires. The latter provision was an afterthought ; it was an 
experimental feature, but that it is now justified as a permanent policy of 
the Government the results achieved are conclusive proof. 

The appropriation for co-operative fire protection for the current year 
is one hundred thousand dollars. The law requires that the protection 
must be limited to private and State lands on the forested watersheds 



37 

of navigable streams, that a state must have provided by law for a system 
of forest fire protection, and that the federal expenditure in any state 
can not exceed in the same year the expenditure made by the state. 

Co-operation began in 1911 with eleven states, in which approximately 
seven million acres of forest land received protection, two hundred federal 
patrolmen were employed, and the federal exi^enditure was only about 
thirty-nine thousand dollars. The number of states is now twenty-four, 
the area protected is approximately fifteen million acres, the number of 
federal patrolmen employed is four hundred, and the federal expenditure 
is practically the full appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars. These 
states include all but one of the Northeastern States, about half of the 
Southern States, the three Lake States, the four in the Pacific Northwest, 
and California. The chief result accomplished by this co-operation, besides 
the purchase of a certain amount of protection, has been educational, 
especially in encouraging states which have had no protective system to 
enact legislation providing for one and appropriating funds for its support. 
Furthermore, private owners have been encouraged through state and fed- 
eral co-operation to adopt protective measures and, where practicable, to 
organize into associations. 

The federal appropriation is allotted to the states on the basis of the 
greatest good to the greatest number. A maximum is fixed, depending on 
the number of states to receive co-operation. At first this was ten thousand 
dollars, but the increase in the number of states necessitated a reduction 
first to eight thousand dollars and then to seven thousand dollars. The 
money is used primarily for the hire of lookout watchmen and patrolmen. 
The watchmen are stationed on prominent points from which the lower 
country can be seen and forest fires readily detected. By means of tele- 
phone, these men describe the location of a fire to patrolmen or fire wardens, 
who endeavor to secure help, if necessary, and reach the fire as quickly 
as possible. 

As compared with the federal expenditure of one hundred thousand 
dollars annually, the twenty-four states co-operating are expending about 
six hundred fifty thousand dollars, and private owners in these states 
approximately a like amount. The private and state holdings in these 
twenty-four states which require protection from fire, including both tim- 
bered and cut-over lands, aggregate at least one hundred forty million 
acres. To adequately protect this area will require a minimum expendi- 
ture of one and one-half cents an acre yearly, or something more than 
two million dollars. If, as stated above, these states and private owners 
are together expending about a million and a quarter, this sum falls short 
of the estimated minimum by about three-quarters of a million. From these 
figures, it is obvious that the Federal Government is not recognizing its 
responsibility in this matter in adequate fashion. Furthermore, these 
twenty-four states do not include such important timber states as Penn- 
sylvania, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi and Arkansas. If these were extended co-operation, the above-men- 
tioned area of one hundrded forty million acres would be increased to at 
least two hundred millions, for the adequate protection of which the 
yearly minimum expenditure required would amount to three million dol 



lars. My opinion is, therefore, that when the states and private oWnet-s do 
their part, with the latter disposing of their slash after lumbering, the 
fair share of the Government in the co-operation would be at least one 
million dollars. 

Befoi-e leaving the subject of co-operative fire protection as provided 
for under the Weeks Law, I wish to say that it is my feeling that the 
best interests of the public would be served by doing away with the limita- 
tion in that law in regard to the watersheds of navigable streams and by 
placing the co-operation exclusively on the basis of protecting our future 
timber supplies. Merely because the purchase of lands is limited to such 
watersheds is no sound reason for so limiting the co-operative fire pro- 
tection. It places an unnecessary restriction on the expenditure of federal 
funds on certain lands where protection is urgently needed. All forest 
lands need protection from fire. This restriction should be removed. 

I have in this paper given the subject of fire protection more space 
than other subjects, and I realize that it is of minor importance in parts of 
Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. Still, it is the largest forest problem which 
confronts the country as a whole, and I realize how very seriously it 
affects your wood-using industries which draw their supplies of lumber and 
other forest products largely from other states. Moreover, fire protection 
is the only co-operative undertaking in forestry which the Government and 
the states have started on a substantial and permanent basis. 

Along with fire protection should go the reforestation of denuded lands. 
Whatever areas of this character which the Government or the states do 
not acquire, and the aggregate will be large, will, by reason of the time 
element and present economic conditions, remain luiforested for a long per- 
iod unless the Government and the states co-operate with the private own- 
ers. Some of the states have been doing this for a number of years. The 
common practice is to sell the planting stock at cost. But even so, the ac- 
complishment in the reforestation of private lands has been almost insignifi- 
cant both because of the small appropriations made by the states for the 
purpose and because of the cost of placing the young trees in the ground, 
which of necessity has largely to be done by inexperienced labor. The 
present average cost of such planting is in the neighborhood of ten dollars 
an acre, including the price of the trees which generally amounts to less 
than half. If we consider first only the most important stretches of de- 
nuded lands, it is estimated that the area totals at least five million acres. 
The cost of reforesting this would amount to approximately fifty million 
dollars or if one hundred thousand acres could be reforested annually, 
the yearly cost would be one million dollars. Even so small a program of 
reforestation would require fifty years. If private owners would enter 
into contracts with the states by which the former would pay the cost 
of the planting operation, which would be at least one-half of the total, and 
agree to give the plantation the necessary protection and care, I believe 
that the Federal Government would be justified in giving the undertaking 
the great encouragement that it would, by sharing with the states the 
remainder on a fifty-fifty basis, or, if I may be specific, by, making a yearly 
appropriation of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. 

Some day we shall have in this country a sustained yield of timber an- 



39 

nually. Some day we shall manage our forests with this in view. A few 
organizations, like the larger pnlp companies, are endeavoring now to get 
on a sustained yield basis. But in many cases this is scarcely possible on 
account of the pressure for quick returns and the method of tinancing for- 
est lands. The Federal Government and states should co-operate as far as 
possible in encouraging and aiding private owners to cut their forests con- 
servatively. The way which api^ears now to be the most feasible is through 
some form of loan that will enable timber land owners to secure money 
from the Government or states on easier terms than is possible elsewhere, 
and a change in the method of taxing forest land. It has been suggested 
that the provisions of the Farm Loan Act be extended to include the 
financing of forest properties and that Federal Forest Loan banks be estab- 
lished. By whatever financial and taxation plans the conservative handling 
of our forests is made possible, the Government and states might co-operate 
further, and follow the custom in some foreign countries, by detailing for- 
esters to the owners of the large, so-called commercial timber tracts to 
assist in the execution of the work. 

The conservative handling of forests connected with the farms can be 
very largely encouraged through the agricultural extension work conducted 
under the Smith-Lever law. The appropriation under this law for the 
current year is over four million five hundred thousand dollars which, for 
the most part, the states must duplicate. The money is allotted to the 
states on the basis of rural population and is expended through the States 
Relations Service in co-operation with the Director of Extension in the 
various states. The work is chiefly demonstrational and is conducted by 
county agents right on the ground. One can readily see the possibilities 
in this for extension in farm forestry. It offers practically a virgin field. 
No phase of forestry is of greater importance to the states of Indiana, 
Ohio, and Illinois, than the proper handling of farm woodlands on ttie 
basis of continuous production. The area of farm woodlands in these 
states is about ten million acres, which is something like ninety per cent, 
of their aggregate forest area, and farm woodlands occupy between ten 
and fifteen per cent of the area in farms. 

As in agriculture so in forestry the most effective way to encourage 
farmers to adopt scientific practice is through field demonstrations on their 
own property or in their own locality. Of course, any increase in the 
value of products is an additional incentive. Farmers have given little 
or no attention to the proper handling of their woodland and they have 
been strikingly ignorant of the value of wood products. As a rule, they 
are chiefly interested in getting immediate returns from the woodland 
and care little about its future development. This fact should serve as 
a method of approach in encouraging them to cut their timber conserva- 
tively. In other words, they must be assisted in getting larger revenue if 
they are to become more interested in improving the woodland and raising 
more and better timber. To this end farmers need to be given practical 
information about markets for the various kinds of timber, methods of 
selling, the variation in the common log rules used, and where practicable 
the grading of lumber. In some cases it may also be feasible for the farm- 
ers to form co-operative marketing associations similar to other agricul- 



40 

tural associations for marketing purposes, since an association of this kind 
would be able to get the advantage of cheaper freight rates and market 
the material to better advantage than the individual owner. 

Farm forestry should be an important branch of farm management, 
particularly in connection with diversified farming, such as is practiced in 
this region. It offers the opportunity for the use of otherwise idle land. 
The forest on the farm is the source of much wood for home use such as 
fuel, fence materials, and rough building stock, and where coal is largely 
used it affords a reserve fuel supply ; it acts as a windbreak for crops ; it 
affords shade for stock ; it offers an opportunity for the profitable employ- 
ment of men and teams at times when other farm work is light ; it helps 
to check erosion, and it brings in revenue from the sale of wood products. 
Surely in this region the most should be made of the farm woodland. 

Farm forestry is recognized by the States Relations Service as coming 
within the scope of extension work authorized by the Smith-Lever law. 
But before it can be conducted on an adequate scale the Forest Service 
must have additional funds .so that trained foresters can be employed to 
direct the work. The states would then be authorized also to employ 
foresters with Smith-Lever funds to work in the various counties as 
extension foresters who would conduct demonstrations, give practical in- 
formation to the farmers, and instruct the county agents in forestry prac- 
tice. In the states of Indiana, Ohio and Illinois, it is urgent that 
co-operative work of this character should be started and aggressively car- 
ried on. 

I have endeavored in this paper briefly to describe the main features 
of the important lines of co-operation which the Federal Government and 
the states should undertake, or which, if already begun, should be largely 
extended. The question is chiefly one of making funds available. This 
is for the public through congress and the state legislatures to decide. The 
public is being given the fffcts about our forest problem by the state and 
federal forestry departments and the various forestry associations. May 
we hope for an adequate response. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN: Before taking up the discussion of these two 
papers, I am asked to call your attention to the fact that at eight o'clock in 
this room there will be a banquet, the price of the tickets being two dollars 
and fifty cents, and those who plan to attend should get their tickets imme- 
diately. Also if you are thinking of accepting the invitation to visit the 
experimental farm which Mr. Lieber is conducting, you should see the 
secretary for particulars and give him your name so that accommodations 
may be made for those who wish to go. 

DR. LOGAN: I would like to ask Col. Graves to what extent aero- 
planes are being used in fire protection. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: We have secured the co-operation of the War 
Department during the past .season in California and there has also been 
some work done in Oregon. The original plan was to get as many track 
fields, located in different parts of the country, as possible, but there 
wasn't money enough for that so all that could be done was to have a little 
work done in their fields. In the long run I believe it will be too expensive 



41 

to have separate air service. Now we have a patrol ou a forest in southern 
California and in central California and we have patrols in certain parts 
of Oregon. So far the aeroplane service has proved valuable and very in- 
teresting. There are a good many things that the aeroplane can see that 
ygu can't see from a signal station. We have also tried the stationary 
balloon, but a man in an aeroplane which is moving over the ground can 
see things that the stationary object can't see. A good many people believe 
that a small dirigible would be a better instrument than the plane, but we 
haven't had an opportunity to try it. Of course the greatest diflEiculty that 
we have is in the remote, undeveloped wilderness where we have no roads, 
no trains and can't get to the fires quickly after they have been discovered. 
We don't go far enough. We don't accomplish what we start out to 
accomplish because of lack of funds. I don't know of a state that is getting 
enough money to carry on protective work. 

THE CHAIRMAN : Do you find any opposition to federal encroachment 
on state reservations? 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: This plan as I have proposed is assisting the 
states along these lines. The federal officers are working under the state 
forestry. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The reason I asked that question is because I 
have had a small part in the admission of the Smith-Lever act in Illinois. 
I have been surprised to find how many people there are who are a little 
bit alarmed at the thought of federal inspectors working instead of the 
state when the federal government is furnishing large sums of money for 
vocational education. I wonder if you have found in any of the forestry 
propositions as you have presented them to us this afternoon, any objection 
anywhere to federal supervision. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : I have found no objection as far as I have pro- 
posed it. I have, on the other hand, found a good many persons who think 
I do not go far enough, 

PROF. BLAIR : Mr. Miller in his paper this morning, pointed out that 
in the State of Illinois there are some six and a half million acres of land 
which might better be used for forestry purposes than for other uses. 
Now we are not especially interested as a state in the matter of fire pro- 
tection, but we are interested in the proposition of co-operation. It is now 
a question of what we must do as a state through the legislature to get 
the co-operation that we need from the federal government. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : I'd like to see that incorporated into a law setting 
forth that principle and appropriating funds which could be used by the 
Secretary of Agriculture. I would make the law very broad so that 
he could attend to reforestation and participate in the establishment of 
nurseries in the state. I would like to see the state of Illinois go a good 
deal further than they have so far. 

THE CHAIRMAN : I have had a question in my mind as to what those 
charts are up there. 

MR. PETERS : I might say that they are prepared to show the lumber 
production in these three states and the men employed, and the relation of 



42 

wood-using industries to all other industries as to the number of men em- 
ployed, capital invested, and value of the products. 

You will notice in Illinois there are 140,0(X) men employed in the wood- 
using industry, while there are 620,000 employed in all industries. In 
Indiana there are 265,000 men employed in all of the industries with 
70.000 employed in wood-using. In Ohio there are 600,000 in all industries 
and 90,000 in wood-using. 

In Illinois there is $2,000,000,000 invested in all industries with $400.- 
000,000 invested in lumber using industries. Indiana has $675,000,000 in- 
vested in all industries with $175,000,0000 invested in wood-using industries. 
Ohio has $1,675,000,000 in all industries and $160,000,000 in wood-using. 

The value of all products in Illinois is $2,250,000,000 and the value of 
wood-using products is $320,000,000. The value of all products in Indiana 
is $730,000,000 and wood-using products are valued at $140,000,000. In 
Ohio the value of all products is $1,785,000,000 and the value of woofl-using 
products is $175,000,000. 

MR. LOVEJOY : The figures of these charts show that the wood-using 
industries employ a large proportion of the men in our three states and 
that a large proportion of the capital invested in all industries is invested 
in lumber-using industries. I am wondering if the timber deficit is likely 
to be so great as to seriously injure these industries. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : That is a very direct question which should be 
answered by a result of a direct study. I can only answer that in general 
terms. I have talked with a great many mill men and asked them how 
much of a supply they have ahead and inquired if they are still able to get 
material. They haven't a definite supply ahead but they seem to think 
they will be able to get their material whenever they need it. 

MR. LOVEJOY : Does it seem likely they will be secure for a period 
of ten years? 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : I think so. 

MR. LOVEJOY : Timber is a long-time crop and if anything is to be 
done upon an adequate scale it should be done very shortly. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: Both of the estimates apply to the higher grade 
timber. We need in the first place the husbanding of material of medium 
size. We need to prepare ourselves for the exhaustion of that material 
and start to grow material. I presume that material will be found that 
can be substituted for the best grades which will tide us over in a measure 
if we start now. If it is taken hold of immediately, I think there is a 
chance of tiding over. 

MR. LOVEJOY : Then yon would anticipate that conditions would be- 
come really serious if something is not done? 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : Yes, I think they would become very serious. 
Many plants would have to go out of business. 

THE CHAIRMAN : Do you mean that wood used in many things would 
be laid aside and some substitute devised? 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: That would be done to a certain extent. But 



43 

we have never found a satisfactory substitute for wood and I don't believe 
we ever will. Wood is a better material for a great many uses than any 
substitute, but we could get along if we had to, but not otherwise. I think 
it is very urgent that we take steps now. 

THE CHAIRMAN: The statement has been made that the average 
man who has any wood-holdings at all has no conception of their value 
and that people will sell woodlots and wood-holdings without ever stopping 
to consider their value. Great sums of money are invested in tliis part of 
the country in wood-using industries and the supply is steadily growing 
smaller and certainly under such a plan, it will soon disappear, so it seems 
to me that the most important thing to be done is to constantly issue this 
call of danger. People don't understand how important this subject is and 
it is hard to enlighten them. But if we don't arouse them it will be mighty 
serious. 

SENATOR GUTHRIE : One of the important questions is how to pro- 
tect what we already have. This state is a large, rich state, most of which 
is being farmed. As Mr. Deam told us this morning, we have some small 
areas of timber and we want to know how to protect them. We still use 
wood for ties and today we are getting about six times the amount we 
got for the first ties we sold. We have never found a substitute for ties. 
In our state the scarcity of timber is getting to be a very serious question. 
I think that we should protect the young timber in some way and show the 
people that there is nothing more profitable than raising timber, if it is 
handled in the right way. 

MR. SEGREST : Colonel Graves, have you anything in mind relative to 
a timber census of the entire, country? 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: I proposed to have an economic survey of the 
timber resources in connection with the present census. There is a bill at 
congress now setting aside one hundred thousand dollars for a survey of 
materials. Of course that would be quite inadequate. 

Senator Guthrie, why wouldn't it be possible for the state of Indiana 
to adopt a program of acquisition of forests on a much larger scale than 
heretofore ? 

SENATOR GUTHRIE : That is what we want to do. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : I feel aLso that we have got to get forestry to the 
agricultural man. I judge from the papers given this morning that they 
haven't appreciated the place of forestry in agriculture. 

Now what are we going to do without wood? What substitute are 
we going to use? Metals? I don't think so for an instant. 

THE CHAIRMAN: I am advised that it is necessary that we adjourn 
so they can get this room ready for our banquet tonight. Unless there is 
some other question or some other matters which ought to be considered 
at this time, I will entertain a motion for adjournment. 

ADJOURNMENT. 



W^EDNESDAY EVENING, BANQUET SESSION 

The meeting was called to order at 8 :00 p. m., with Mr. Walter Crim, 
President of the Indiana Hardwood Lumber association, presiding. 



44 

MR. WALTER CRIM : Gentlemen of the conservation conference and 
distinguished guests, we are certainly very glad to see this liberal turn-out 
this evening in honor of the movement inaugurated by Indiana, Illinois 
and Ohio in conserving the forests of our states. This is an opportune 
time to start a movement of this kind and as usual, Indiana is glad to be 
in the foreground with the assistance of her sister states. 

I don't know why you should pick a lumberman to start the ball rolling 
tonight. But I am glad to say that our entire Board of Directors is here 
in a body attending this meeting. No movement of this kind is successful 
without a good ringmaster. In Indiana we have had many orators and 
writers but we have kept the best at home and I am very glad to introduce 
the Honorable Charles Bookwalter, who will take charge of this meeting. 
(Applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER: As I look over this illustrious and dignified 
array of talent, I feel that this limited program that I hold here in my 
hand somewhat checks the possibilities of the evening's festivities because 
as the majority of you are from Indiana, and Hoosiers being orators, it 
may take us until the wee small hours to get everything said that we want 
to say. 

I suppose all of you think that to make everything fitting and proper, we 
should open up with a talk by the Governor. I am almost in bad because 
I insisted that he should make a few remarks and he insisted that he 
should not be called upon, so I am going to keep faith with him. But I 
will say that this bland gentleman sitting at my right presides over the des- 
tinies of the state of Indiana. 

The toastmaster is not expected to make a speech, but as soon as I 
get on my feet, I readily fall into my weakness of talking too much. But 
I am not going to do that tonight, although I would like to talk about your 
problems. Some of my kind friends tell me that I can talk more at length 
and most entertainingly on those subjects which I know nothing about. 
(Laughter) I am sorry to confess that I know nothing about forestry 
except what I have learned as a businessman of the world. 

Indiana, Illinois and Ohio are the very garden spots of the world. But 
I do watch these things as I pass through life and I have thought of these 
problems and I have read about them. I am not going to abuse the lumber- 
man. He is not guilty of destruction except when he cuts indiscriminately 
—he only cuts what the necessities of man compel him to cut. We must 
reserve, not so much preserve, but we must replace the timber that we are 
using now. 

Yesterday I came down from northern Indiana. I had gone up in 
Wabash county on a business trip and as we were driving back we 
passed an eighty-acre woods. It was just as God had planted it — it had 
never been cut at all and nothing in it had been touched. I said to my 
friend, Charlie Greathouse, who was with me. "Look at that ; isn't it won- 
derful?" "Yes," he said, "that is a remarkable woods." We stopped our 
car and sat in silence just looking at that magnificent picture. 

All of the land in this part of the country was at one time covered with 
forests just like the one that we stopped to look at, but this wonderful 
cowtry has bee» stripped bare. We must »ot continue to do this without 



45 

replacing in some measure the trees that we have destroyed. We must 
think of the future of this country. Man is naturally a destructive animal. 
If you don't believe that, just keep your eyes open. So this sort of a con- 
ferences comes at this time particularly "pat" for the people of Ohio, 
Illinois and Indiana. 

Now I am going to present the first gentleman on the program. Mr. 
Pack is unable to be here this evening and Mr. P. S. Ridsdale is to fill his 
place. (Applause) 

MR. P. S. RIDSDALE : Mr. Toastmaster and gentlemen, Mr. Pack, who 
was to speak to you this evening, is ill and is unable to be here. He caught 
a bad cold recently and his physician forbids him to leave his home. He 
has asked me to be his substitute this evening and so I would like to read 
to you a little article which Mr. Pack had planned to read. 

"I do not believe the human mind can devise a more suitable memorial 
to Theodore Roosevelt than a movement which will look to preserving the 
forests of this country. Knowing the man, as it was my privilege to know 
him, I am positive that could the selection of a memorial be left to his 
choosing he would say 'save the forests.' As president he called the first 
conference of governors which took up the great questions of conserving 
our natural resources. He was our greatest exponent of the value of these 
resources and of the value to the nation of outdoor life. 

"You foresters can do a great work in directing the public mind to these 
values. You must take the public into your confidence and the way to do 
that is to tell your story to the editors of the country for without them your 
progress will be as that of the snail— you may get there some day but with- 
out the editors I firmly believe you will have arrived when there are no 
forests to conserve. Our forests are like a bank account ; they cannot be 
continually drawn upon without making some deposits. 

"If you expect to see a national forest policy adopted in this country 
you have to show the people the necessity for it as they are the ones who 
pay the bills. There is but one way to show the people and that way is 
through the editors. The editor is the spark that stands between your lever 
— the forest policy, and the motor — its adoption. Show your editor what 
a forest policy means and where our forests, one of our great natural re- 
sources are going, your motor starts and your battle is nine-tenths won. 

"The force of public opinion today is working 'on high' on several ques- 
tions. Turn that force toward a national forest policy. Show your editor 
what a national forest policy will do and the wheels will begin to turn. 
Show him how a national forest policy adopted one hundred twenty-five 
years ago in France saved her and civilization. Show him how the forests 
of France held back the Hun from Paris. Show him the figures that esti- 
mate last year's forest fire losses to be $28,500,000. Show him what a 
national forest policy means to his paper bill. Show him that the net 
growth of timber is not more than one-third the amount which is being 
used or destroyed every year. Show the editor these things and you show 
the world. 

"The time has come for forestry to be taught as a science in a college, 
to become a subject for popular thought. The people must be interested 
^ tpegs. The Americftij Forestry association is conducting a campaign toy 



46 

a national forestry policy by telling the people how vitally necessary it is 
to them. It is also conducting a campaign for memorial tree planting and 
for roads of remembrance which is the road side planting of trees as me- 
morials to the heroes of the great war. I hear some good foresters say that 
it is not forestry. Before you can become initiated into the mystei'ies of 
where the milk comes from you must first get acquainted with the cow. 
Before you can hope to enjoy , the delights of Shakespeare you must 
first give some thought to the construction of the English language. Be- 
fore the producer puts on a play lie spends thousands of dollars in an 
endeavor to get an audience for that play. Before you foresters can ever 
hope to interest the public, which is the court of last resort in this country 
in a national forest policy, you have got to interest that public in a tree. 

"That is just what the American Forestry association is doing. The 
response on the part of the editors has been magnificent. As a result the 
people are planting trees as never before, as memorials to the man who 
gave his life or offered his life to his country. I could recite here hun- 
di-eds of places where trees are being planted. Roads of remembrance are 
being laid out and memorial groves and parks being planted. Does anyone 
doubt that those people will listen with a ready ear to the reasons for a 
national forest policy? They are getting acquainted with a tree. As a re- 
sult you will be able to talk trees to them. 

"If the people of the United States want to erect a real monument, a 
lasting memorial for all time, in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, let them 
mark his birthday next Monday, October 27, by starting to work in earnest 
for a national forest policy. You can celebrate 'the coming of age,' the 
twenty-first anniversary of forestry being taught in a college, in no better 
way than by taking the public in on the celebration. 

"You gentlemen are the ones to take the lead. Some of you represent 
forestry and some of you the lumber industry. Get together first on a 
fire protection policy. Then get together on other features of a national 
forest policy. Let me quote just a paragraph from the opening address of 
Mr. Roosevelt, the then president, to the congress of governors in 1908. I 
quote, 'Every step of the progress of mankind is marked by the discovery 
and use of natural resources previously unused. Without such progressive 
knowledge and utilization of natural resources jwpulation could not grow, 
new industries multiply, nor the hidden wealth of the earth be developed 
for the benefit of mankind. We want to take action that will prevent the 
advent of a woodless age and defer as long as possible the advent of an 
ironless age.' Those words have even greater weight today, since a world 
war has made such inroads on our resources, than the day they were spoken. 
Call your findings the Roosevelt Memorial National Forestry Policy if 
you like the suggestion, and you will have honored the man who did so 
much in pointing to the value of our forests. In any event, you will have 
done the greatest of services to posterity — you will have saved our greatest 
natural resource for that posterity." (Applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER : This evening just prior to my departure from 
home I was talking to the members of my family about this particular 
occasion. A member of my household was an officer in the late world war 
and served in France. He said to me," Well, Dad, if those men down there 



47 

want to find out how much a tree is valued, tell them to go over to France " 
He then told me about an incident which happened in a rest camp in 
which his battalion was placed. They were constructing a retreat when 
a hard-boiled old sergeant concluded that they needed a tree as a sort of a 
screen and began poking aroimd to find one. He finally decided on a young 
sapling about four inches in diameter and promptly cut it down. A hornet's 
nest broke loose around his ears. A major rushed up and yelled, "Who cut 
that tree?" The French had command of each billeting sector so a 
Frenchman rushed up and demanded to know who cut that tree. Before 
they got through with that sergeant, my son said that he was afraid the 
story would get to General Pershing himself. Those people over there 
no longer have the forests that we still possess. Practically all of their 
trees were planted by man so they have learned to value them. But we 
go on and waste our heritage like a nation of drunken sailors and when 
somebody comes around with a suggestion that we should not only con- 
serve and protect that which we possess, but map out a iwlicy of replace- 
ment, the matter is treated as a source of jocularity. 

I met a friend of mine down stairs before I came up here to speak to 
you and he said : "Well, what bunch of cranks are you going to talk to this 
evening?" People of this day consider a person who has a problem a 
crank. I thank God that you men are here to work out ways to protect 
our land for coming generations. It is necessary to cut our trees, of course, 
but they should be cut only as our needs demand, and cut wisely. 

I am not going to make a speech, I am just going to present Professor 
H. H. Chapman of Yale Forest School. (Applause) 

PROF. H. H. CHAPMAN: When I was asked to address this confer- 
ence, I consented, but I did so before I knew I would have to present my 
paper at a banquet. I am afraid this is going to seem very dry to you and 
I think another subject might have been presented with much better grace 
at this time. The subject of forest taxation has the reputation of emptying 
the hall faster than any other subject. (Laughter) 

From the time when the possibility of handling forest lands to produce 
future crops of timber, instead of stripping and abandoning them, was 
first discussed in this country, two arguments have been advanced by for- 
est owners as imposing insuperable obstacles to the undertaking of for- 
estry ; namely, fire and taxes. Lumbermen in Minnesota and elsewhere 
expressed themselves eager to maintain their forest lands in growing tim- 
ber, but unfortunately such a policy required investments in holding land, 
young timber, etc., and there was no reasonable chance of realizing on 
this investment because of the certainty of destruction by fire, or confisca- 
tion by taxation. Therefore they were reluctantly compelled to strip the 
land bare and let it burn. 

Foresters met this challenge by undertaking to provide fire laws and 
administration and the time is approaching when the risk of destruction 
by fire will be brought under reasonable control — it never did present much 
of a problem in hardwood regions of farm woodlots. 

At the same time the question of reform in forest taxation was taken 
up, but here very great obstacles were encountered and up to the present 
time no general solution has been reached, nor are there any laws in oper- 
ation which have become generally used or promise to meet the situation. 



48 

Yet if we are to grow forests on private lands, the "risk" of confiscatory 
taxation must be met or else it will continue to be cited as an obstacle 
which prevents the contemplation of forestry by land owners, much as 
they might desire to practice it. 

Is the present system of taxation an obstacle to the production of timber 
on forest lands? Or is this conception a convenient myth, to color a failure 
to put these lands to a use in which the owners have no interests or are 
deterred' by other, quite different, factors? The main reason why lands 
are not devoted to gi-owing trees are, that Americans as a class do not un- 
derstand the business of forestry, its practice, its economic advantages or 
its necessity as a measure of general property and public economy, and 
having in the main, destroyed the forest capital by a mistaken policy of 
clean cutting, are loth to undertake the restoration of the business by the 
time consuming process of tree planting and growth — so many obstacles 
look big to them, and taxation becomes a serious stumbling block. 

Is the general property tax a burden sufficient to prevent or discourage 
the undertaking of growing crops of timber? This is a very different prob- 
lem from that presented by the annual tax on timber which is already 
mature and fit to cut. Annual taxes on standing mature timber tend to 
force cutting. But mature timber ought to be cut — ^if held for long periods, 
it represents an economic waste. The community is deprived of the use of 
wood, incurs a loss of wages, industries dependent on wood suffer, and a 
form of capital which represents taxable wealth escapes its just burden 
of taxation. This is especially true, since virgin timber has usually cost the 
owner nothing in the way of expense for production — it is not an artificially 
grown crop — the only expense is fire protection which is a form of insur- 
ance similar to that placed on any property, and taxes. The investment 
of capital in mature timber is often for speculative purposes, with no 
thought of engaging in forest production. It is true that large timber op- 
erators often find it necessary in order to insure a supply of raw material, 
to acquire a twenty year supply of timber, the taxes on which may prove 
a large item of expense. When this supply is so great as to require fifty 
years to remove it, the holding can be considered largely as purely specu- 
lative, and not needed for the conduct of a normal operation, and it is not 
good policy to relieve speculators of a just burden of taxation in order that 
they may realize expected profits from which the community gains no 
advantage. The tendency of taxation to force the cutting of timber is not 
in itself the evil to be met — this problem should have been solved in quite 
another way; namely, by retaining the ownership of these large timber 
reserves in public hands as was done with the national forests. 

Another reason for taxing timber is that the growth in virgin timber 
is negligible, being offset by decay and other natural losses, so that the 
productive capacity of the land is not put to its proper use but is stagnant. 

A final reason for continuing to tax mature timber is the loss in public 
revenues which would result from exempting such property from taxation, 
and which would tend to defeat any effort to bring about such an exemption. 

The arguments of owners of standing timber; namely, that taxation 
would prevent their utilizing the land after cutting to produce new crops 
of timber is not an argument for relief from proper or equitable taxation 
of timber already grown. 



49 

Is there then still a problem of taxation connected with timber? There 
is. The admitted fact that annual taxes on standing timber hastens the 
cutting and makes holding unprofitable, tending to increase the cost of 
lumber, acts with equal force to discourage the production of new crops. 
Owners and operators come to believe that if taxes on standing timber 
are a heavy burden, it would be a still greater burden on land devoted 
to forest production, when extended over the long period required to grow 
a crop. And they are right. 

While necessary as a present day measure of revenue production, on 
timber purchased as an investment, the principle of taxing property values 
instead of income creates this undue burden of taxation just so long as it 
is impossible to realize the income with which to meet this tax. This 
results from two factors. First, the total tax or sum of taxes paid on 
such non-productive property continually increases with the period of 
holding which explains the difficulties of large speculative holdings. 
Second, it is hot the same thing to pay out a given sum at the time the 
revenue is realized from this property and to pay this same total amount 
at periods anywhere from one to forty yearS in advance of this income. In 
the latter case mathematicians compute the total equity at compound 
interest and for periods of twenty years or more, even the most reason- 
able rates of interest will give a total cost of from three to ten times the 
actual cash outlay. 

These facts are well known to investors and while the purchaser or 
owner of mature timber has the opportunity or choice of cutting, no 
such choice is presented to the owner of land and growing timber who, 
in order to get revenue would have to go out of business ; namely, sell 
the land itself. It is therefore perfectly fair to state that unless a differ- 
ent system of taxation is applied in the future to property represented by 
growing timber, few will have the courage to attempt the undertaking or 
to cut their mature timber in a manner so as to secure reproduction by 
leaving a part of the stand, the younger trees, as an investment in for- 
estry. 

Accepting past and present conditions as a necessity, does not mean 
that we can ignore future conditions. If we wish to continue to have 
timber it will be necessary to grow it. Nature unaided will not produce 
the goods. There is not time to discuss this at length, but the statement 
is based on wide and close observation of the conditions in which cut-over 
land is left after logging with no thought for the future. 

It is therefore the absolute duty of states to provide a different and 
equitable system of taxation for timber. This need has been almost 
universally recognized and nearly every eastern, northern and prairie 
state has legislation of some kind intended to encourage the growing and 
planting of trees. Yet up to this time not one of these laws has solved 
the problem nor do any existing laws even promise to accomplish the 
needed reform. 

Why have these laws failed in practice? The answer in every case 
is that they have sought to create special conditions or exceptions in the 
nature of privileges, to such owners of forest lands as agree to carry 
out special measures ; namely, practice forestry, and have never attempted 



50 

to create correct conditions applicable to all timberland, without disarim- 
ination. To these special conditions have been tied numerous special 
requirements of procedure, or red tape, often accompanied by a burden 
of inspection, penalties for failure to comply, or regulations of methods 
of management. The cost of the proposed systems to the owner far exceeds 
the privileges granted, and the cost of administration by the state is too 
large in proportion to the benefit derived. 

The initial mistake was to grant bounties, tax rebates, tax exemptions, 
or low fixed valuation of forest lands as a feward for planting or growing 
trees. The reasons for failure lie in the general system of assessment of 
taxes. Such lands seldom form more than a small portion of any taxable 
unit. Local assessors resent such exemptions, and nullify their effects 
by adjusting other assessed values so that there is no saving to the owner, 
who is put to the trouble of complying with additional formalities to 
secure a fictitious gain. The general underlying principle of such laws is 
wrong, for if we are seeking to correct an injustice or inequity in taxing 
timber, all such property is equally entitled to the benefits of this reform 
rather than to attempt to set up an elaborate system of separating sheep 
from goats, in which the goats being numerically superior will ultimately 
see that the special privileges are wiped out. 

Private property is not usually taxed according to the intention of the 
owner as to its future use, or his actual method of handling it, but solely 
on the basis of the material values present. Yet every law for forest tax 
reform has disregarded this fundamental fact, probably confusing the idea 
of possible public benefits with that of public ownership and use. 

This error has created insuperable difficulties of which a few may be 
cited : 

1. The effort to fix and reduce the assessed value of forest land has 
required : 

(a) Clssification of land. 

1' on basis of intention of owner to practice forestry. 

2' on basis of suitability of the land for forestry. 

3' on basis of the value of the land, to prevent misuse of the 

law by speculators to avoid taxation. (This factor has 

caused the vetoing of some such laws.) 

(b) It has at the same time threatened to so reduce local revenues 

that its final overthrow would follow its widespread appli- 
cation. It is self-defeating. 

2. The effort to require the practice of forestry on such lands as a 
condition of receiving this privilege has required : 

(a) The parceling of holdings into separate lots, with maps, de- 

scriptions and legal forms, special blanks, listings and 
assessments. 

(b) The compulsory incurring of expense for planting or other 

measures, not required of other forest owners. 

(c) Special provisions for penalties in shape of back taxes on 

withdrawals of lands from the special class. 

(d) Limitation of maximum areas to receive the supposed benefits 

of tax reform. 



51 

(e) Special contracts to cover the obligations incurred by state and 

owner. 

(f ) Cumbersome procedure in accounting and in payment of prod- 

ucts taxes. 

(g) Cumbersome efforts to distinguish between age classes, and 

land bearing mature timber versus plantations, which 
features are most difficult to administer as part of a tax 
system, 
(h) Burdensome requirements on state forests in the line of in- 
inspection of small widely scattered tracts to see that 
various phases of the law relation to valuation, practice 
and products tax, are carried out, for which if the law were 
a success, these officials would have absolutely no time 
unless the staff were increased. 

These laws all attempt to shift the burden of taxation, either to other 
land owners or as in Pennsylvania, to the state instead of trying to apply 
a universal tax reform, and permitting the operation of this reform to 
effect such improvements as other conditions render possible. 

What we need is a plan which will not only remove the inequality 
of the present system, but which will remove it on timber as a class of 
property throughout the state, namely, for all owners of timber. There 
are three requirements of such a law. 

1. All forest economists are agreed that the value of timber should 
be separated from that of land for purposes of taxation, and that the 
timber should, if possible, be taxed in the form of a products tax when cut 
in lieu of annual taxes. 

2. It is not generally agreed that local revenue from taxation should 
be maintained, and the products tax substituted gradually. 

3. It is not so universally conceded, but I believe is to be equally 
essential that virgin timber should continue to bear an annual property 
tax and that the reform should apply to future, artificially grown timber. 

The law which comes nearest to satisfying these requirements is that of 
Massachusetts. This in turn was based on the Connecticut law. 

The Connecticut law required the separate valuation of standing, mer- 
chantable timber from land — but it attempts to fix the value of land for 
fifty years and to limit the tax rate to ten mills. Then to avoid specula- 
tion, it limits the value of such lands to twenty-five dollars per acre. 
Standing timber is taxed annually until cut, but young timber will pay 
only a products tax. 

Massachusetts was the first state to establish the principle "that no 
effort should be made to fix or lower the assessed value of bare timber, 
the land is assessed at its fair value as bare land and pays annual taxes. 
This value may be adjusted when changing economic conditions make it 
necessary. This brings all land of whatever character, value or location 
under the operation of the law provided only that the owner desires to 
take advantage of it. The merits of this universal classification are : 

1. That it wipes out the necessity of classifying lands. 



52 

2. That it insures steady and continuous local revenues, and the pos- 
sibility of adjustments of values. 

3. That it does away -with the false principle of special privilege in 
assessed values or rates of taxation. 

The abandonment of the idea of limiting the power of assessors to 
raise land values is a hard point to concede for advocates of forest tax 
reform. But it is the first step towards any lasting progress, and must 
precede the educational movement which will be needed to secure equitable 
valuation of forest land, based on its value for growing timber. If assessors 
can so easily defeat the purpose of special privileges, they will continue 
to show a certain amount of unfairness in valuing lands belonging to 
different owners, but it will be much easier to correct these inequalities 
when all owners of forest land are equally interested. 

The second distinct gain which the Massachusetts law presents is in 
its plan for taxing standing timber. In effect this is to continue the annual 
tax on the present assessed value of this timber until it is cut or destroyed, 
but to arrange for the substitution of a products tax in place of this sys- 
tem, as soon as possible. 

For this purpose, after the original separation of assessed value into 
land and timber, the value of the timber can not thereafter be increased. 
But as fast as the timber is cut, and pays a products tax, this assessment 
is reduced. The basis of reduction is value, not quantity. The purpose is, 
to maintain the original total assessed value of the property, land and 
timber, thus maintaining the town revenue from annual taxes. The chief 
merit in the law is, that only the original assessed value of timber pays 
this annual tax. Growth in value, or growth in volume is not so taxed. 
Value of the timber cut is the basis of wiping out this value of standing 
timber. So that if any such increase in value or growth occurs, it is not 
necessary to cut all of the timber in order to do away for the future with 
the system of annual taxes on the timber. 

Since all increases in assessed valuation of timber are. prohibited, the 
owner of timber who manages it to secure growth, or who leaves young 
trees or a part of the stand for forest investments, and the owner of land 
who plants it or of immature timber who protects it, is assured of relief 
from all annual taxes on standing timber for the future. He does not 
pay these taxes on any timber except the present value of his present 
mature stock, on which as we have seen he should probably pay in 
any case. By paying on this value, the town revenues are absolutely 
protected for the present and near future. It is an equitable arrangement 
for the taxpayer and for the community. 

The third provision of the Massachusetts law is the products tax, im- 
posed on timber at the time of cutting. In this law the payment of this 
tax is the means of securing the reduction and final abatement of the 
annual tax on standing timber. This would appear to threaten double 
taxation. But in effect, this danger is done away with by fixing the amount 
of the tax. This law increases the tax one per cent by five year periods 
up to a maximum of six per cent, on the value of the timber on the stump 
at time of cutting. 

The Justification of imposing a products tax on timber which has bee» 



53 

paying annual taxes lies in this— that the owner has, under the law been 
protected from increased assessed value on his standing timber and can 
therefore predict what his taxes on this timber will be, and that actual 
increase in either or both value, and volume, is sure to occur, which will 
not be taxed annually. 

The real purpose of imposing the products tax is to substitute this tax 
eventually for that on standing timber and to avoid the impossible condi- 
tion of imposing one kind of tax on a part of the timber cut in a region, and 
another kind on the remainder. Young timber which has never paid an 
annual tax must pay a products tax when cut. It is impossible to separate 
this timber, physically, from timber which has borne the annual tax. 
But it is a very simple thing to keep account of the original assessed value 
of standing timber and wipe out this value on the payment of products 
taxes from any timber grown on the owner's property. When this process 
is completed, the substitute of the products tax for annual taxation is com- 
plete for that property. 

This Massachusetts law failed as did its predecessors, not because these 
principles were unsound, but because It still retained the principles of 
classification, and of special requirements to practice forestry by stock- 
ing the land with timber together with the need for special listing and 
records. Less than fifty owners have availed themselves of it in five years. 

If we can accept these principles as established, there then remains one 
feature to make a practicable law — universal application and simplicity of 
procedure — the abandonment of special classification for timber as well as 
for land and the establishment of the principle of taxing as such, and not 
taxing the owner's intentions. This means doing away with the imprac- 
tical features of the law, namely the special classification of lands and 
their registration, the requirements regarding planting, etc., and inspection 
by state officials. But does this leave any forestry? 

The answer is that forestry will never be crammed down an owner's 
throat by a tax law. Given a square deal in taxation, the owner is free 
to choose what use his land is to be put to, and the handicap against for- 
estry is removed. This should be the purpo.se of the law rather than a 
thinly disguised attempt to cajole occasional individuals into placing them- 
selves under state control. 

This leaves a clear field for educational forces in forestry or even 
for measures of necessary regulation, to apply to all alike. 

Can a law be framed which can be applied to all land owners within 
a reasonable period? I believe it can if we do not require impossibilities. 
To accomplish this we must depend on the existing local machinery and 
make its requirements such that they can be met by land owners and 
so that it will be to their advantage to do so. The plan proposed is as 
follows : 

1. Establish by law the principle that all lands when reassessed for 
taxation, must have the value of standing timber separated from that of 
land. 

2. Provide that the value of standing timber when so determined, shall 
not at any time thereafter be reassessed or increased. 

3. Tbat the vftlue Of lancl, separate tvoja that of standing timber shaU 



54 

be that of similar wild or unimproved land in the vicinity and that the 
value if any, of immature or young timber shall not be considered in 
assessing the value of such land, but that land bearing such young 
timber shall be assessed the same as w^ild unimproved bare laud of similar 
quality. 

4. That at any time within five years of passage of the act, any 
owner of land bearing mature timber may declare the value of that timber 
and that thereupon the proper officials shall separate the assessed value of 
the property belonging to the said owner, into two parts, the sum of which 
shall equal the former assessed value of the property. The value of the 
timber shall be entered in a separate record for purposes of future taxation, 
and shall be assessed annually at current rates but shall not thereafter 
be reassessed or increased. The remaining value shall be the assessed value 
of laud and other property, and shall be assessed as before, so that the 
sum of assessed values shall remain the same as the total property as if the 
separation had not been made, for a guaranteed period of at least three 
years. 

5. That in consideration of declaration of value of timber, there shall 
be no revaluation of the land for a period of three years thereafter, and 
that in consideration of the fact that whatever valuation is placed by the 
owner on the timber the owner thus fixes the residual value of the land 
for taxation, and that the total value of the property is neither increased 
nor decreased, the assessors shall accept without review the value of said 
timber and not increase the same, since such action would either decrease 
the assessed value of the land or increase the value of the total property 
before the end of the period of three years agreed upon. 

6. That at the expiration of three years from date of declaring the 
value of the timber, or at any time thereafter, the value of the land may 
be reassessed but that said assessed value shall not include the value of 
any timber whatever, young or mature, and shall not exceed the value of 
the wild or unimproved lands of similar character in the vicinity. 

7. That in the absence of a declaration of value of timber within the 
period of five years, the value of the property shall be assumed to be that 
of land bearing no timber of taxable value, until reassessed. But that 
before reassessing any land on which no timber values have been previously 
declared, the assessors shall ascertain whether there be any timber values 
on said land, and shall in every case separate said value for purposes of 
taxation. 

8. That from date of passage of law, a products tax shall be assessed 
upon the stumpage value of all timber cut from the land except such timber 
products as are used on the land belonging to and assessed against the 
same owner or by the owner in the same town, for domestic use or improve- 
ments having a taxable value. That this tax shall be one per cent, of the 
said value for the first ten years following the passage of act, and shall 
increase one per cent, for each succeeding decade up to a maximum of six 
per cent, provided that nothing in this section shall prevent the payment 
of a products tax on said exempted products for the purpose of obtaining a 
reduction of assessed valuation on said standing timber. 

9. That the value of any timber stumpage which has been declared by 



55 

owner before the products tax was paid, or which has been fixed by 
assessors, in absence of said declaration by owner shall be reduced for 
purposes of future annual taxation by the amount of the value of stumpage 
upon which said tax is paid, provided, that said value of stumpage upon 
which said tax is paid must have reached a total of at least five per cent 
of the original listed value of timber taxable in any one town assessed 
against said owner, before said reduction in assessed value becomes oper- 
ative, and provided, that when the value of said stumpage upon which the 
tax has been paid shall have equalled the original declared or assessed 
value of the timber listed by the owner, said annual taxes shall cease and 
thereafter any timber standing or growing upon said lands shall be relieved 
of annual taxes and shall pay only the stumpage tax on the products when 
cut. 

10. That an account shall be opened with each owner of land having 
standing timber whose value has been assessed for taxation, on which 
shall be entered, the assessed value of standing timber, the value of the 
stumpage upon which a products tax is paid, and the rate and amount of 
the tax. Whenever said value shall equal five per cent, of the assessed 
value of the timber, a reduction shall be made in said assessed value equal 
to value upon which tax has been paid, and the annual taxes shall there- 
after be assessed against said reduced value. 

The purpose of these provisions is self-evident. They are to secure a 
complete or universal adoption of the law within a reasonable time and 
with minimum cost and effort and least injustice. 

It is made an object to timber owners to list the timber values, as by 
doing so they secure a fixed value on this portion of their property and 
protection from increase in total assessment for three years ; namely, from 
any action on part of assessors to nullify the effect of listing timber values 
by simply adding said values to value of the property. They also secure 
a definite procedure by which said values can be extinguished by payment 
of products tax. It is to their interest to declare full values, since this is 
bare land on which taxes will be continued. Failure to declare any value 
permits and justifies the continuation of correspondingly high values on 
the only portion of their assessed value which can subsequently be so ex- 
tinguished. Failure to declare value, or declaration of too low a value 
permits the assessors to determine new value at any future time, both for 
land and timber, while declaration of timber values confines them to re- 
valuation of the land without timber, on the assumption that existing 
values having been the basis of taxation when the law was passed, shall 
equitably remain the basis of taxation of the timber. 

The public interests on the other hand, as represented by the assessors, 
are thoroughly protected. The total assessed value is in no case reduced. 
After three years, the value of the land can, if equitable, be reassessed, 
and within the requirements of the statute, be further adjusted. The loss 
of annual taxes does not occur unless timber is cut, when they should in 
any case cease, and the increasing value of young timber and old stands 
is taxed by a products tax. 

Failure to declare and pay the products tax on old timber carries its 
own punishment in that the timber although cut, will continue to be as- 



56 

sessed and taxed annually. By the time the products tax on young timbet* 
assumes large proportions, the machinery for securing its collection would 
be in good working order. 

Owners of wild, vmimproved or cut-over lands, under this system, will 
pay on the same assessed valuation as those who have left seed trees, young 
timber and have planted or secured natural reproduction. Although the 
latter property will constantly increase in value as the result of forestry, 
there will be no increase in taxation which is not imposed equally upon 
unimproved wild lands. Yet these forested lands will eventually bring 
in the additional revenue of products taxes, besides furnishing employment 
and raw material for the wood-using industries. 

Unless the public is willing to agree in advance to such a plan of tax- 
ation for timber, no such inducement or guarantee is offered for proper 
management, instead the owner of young timber may be certain that the 
assessor will raise the value of such lands because of his industry, long 
before the trees can be cut, and by the time he can sell his crop, taxes 
and interest will have absorbed far too great a part of his expected income. 

If there is anything unequitable in this universal but gradual substi- 
tution of a products tax for the present property tax on standing timber it 
does not appear on the surface. 

I promised you this would be a dry subject and now you see that I was 
right. (Applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER: I now take pleasure in presenting to you Mr. 
Wilson Compton, who is secretary-manager of the National Lumber Man- 
ufacturers' Association. His subject is the "Economic Aspect of State 
Forests." (Applause) 

MR. WILSON COMPTON : Mr. Toastmaster, and ladies and gentlemen 
of the Tri-State Forestry Conference. 

Governor Lowden, in his recent statement that the chief need, not only 
of this country, but of the whole world is "economic equilibrium" has 
furnished a slogan which is peculiarly pertinent to the public problem 
with which three great states, in this conference, are grappling. Equi- 
librium implies a balancing of opposing forces. In the world at large this 
economic balance will be accomplished only through a general increase in 
the production of useful commodities and by a readjustment of consumption 
whereby there shall be more of the necessaries and fewer of the luxuries, 
until normal human activities throughout the world shall have been re- 
established. 

The supply of useful commodities must be made more adequate to meet 
the demand for them upon such terms as will enable all persons who 
will work, to have a fair share of the fruits of their labor. A condition of 
production and distribution, entirely out of normal equilibrium, is primarily 
responsible for the prominent place in the news of the day which is oc- 
cupied by the activities of misguided men, who, by only a wave of the 
hand would accomplish a social state which the experience of the human 
race has indicated can be accomplished only through centuries of gradual 
evolution and development. 

The forests have had a large share in the world's industrial activity, 
and will in the future contribute largely to the accomplishment of economic 



5T 

equilibrium. The effort of the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to 
establish a plan for their forest lands, consistent with the larger needs of 
the nation is a timely one. It is appropriate that search be made for the 
basic principles which must underlie such plan if it is to have promise of 
permanence. For pride or sentiment or opinion should not, and in the 
long run, will not prevail against fact, or against the fundamental economic 
laws upon which industry and commerce have been built, the world over. 

Abundance and variety of natural resources have constituted, perhaps, 
this nation's strongest claim to industrial and commercial prosperity. 
Waste is national folly. Conservation is a guarantee of national life. 

About half a century ago the congress of the United States became 
much exercised over the alarming prospect for the nation's timber supply 
which was then said to exist, a prospect which would within forty years, 
it was stated, leave the United States bare of its great forests. For some 
years thereafter senators and congressmen endeavored to save the forests 
by making speeches about conservation. Then a Division of Forestry was 
operated to find out what was becoming of the trees. Today its powerful 
successor, the United States Forest Service, is itself the administrator of 
more timber in the national forests than congressmen fifty years ago 
thought there was at that time in the whole of the United States. But 
the spectre of the "timber famine" still stalks. 

Essentials of a State Forest Policy. The forests, in addition to provid- 
ing raw material for the manufacture of lumber and other commodities 
of almost universal use, have a more or less remote relation (a) to the 
control of water flow; (b) to soil fertility; (c) to the pleasure and recrea- 
tion of the people; and even, it is often asserted, (d) to climatic conditions 
and the public health. The chief concern of forest conservation is, however, 
the adequate future supply of those useful commodities which are secured 
through the industrial uses of the standing timber, especially through man- 
ufacture into lumber. A determination of the economic position which 
state forests occupy in a consistent plan for the forests of the nation 
as a whole, would involve the answer in the light of all the complex condi- 
tions in American industrial life, to the following four questions : 

First, how much standing timber is needed in the United States? 

Second, what species of timber should be replaced and perpetuated in 
the forests of this country? 

Third, how, geographically, should these forests be distributed? 

Fourth, who should grow and own the forests? 

Quantity, quality, location and ownership! These are the essential 
questions which confront Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and indeed all other 
states, in their effort adequately to meet the needs of their people for the 
products of the forest. 

How Much Tvmher Is Needed? The permanent needs for standing tim- 
ber cannot of course be ascertained with mathematical precision. The 
future is inscrutable. The public requirement for lumber and for other 
forest products cannot be determined separate from the supply of other 
materials having substantially similar uses. An accurate determination 
of probable future forest needs would require a nation-wide survey of the 
whole arena of industry and of the supply of all the materials which may 



58 

be substituted for wood. But such a determination would itself be only 
provisional. Lacking even this information perhaps the most trustworthy 
evidence is to be found in the experience of other nations at the same rela- 
tive stage in industrial development as we are now experiencing in the 
United States. 

It is undeniable that this country is today, and heretofore always has 
been, using up its forests more rapidly than they have been replaced by 
regrowth. When timber was plentiful and cheap, and industrial devel- 
opment in comparative infancy, wood was of course, freely used. In many 
parts of the United States before the war the average annual consump- 
tion per person of lumber and wood products, not including firewood, was 
equivalent to more than two thousand five hundred board feet. In the 
state of Montana an agricultural and mining community it was about one 
thousand two hundred fifty feet; in Oregon, seven hundred twenty feet; 
but in Pennsylvania and New York, industrial states, only three hundred 
feet and tv.o hundred feet re.spectively. In the United States as a whole 
the consumption of lumber per person is now approximately three hundred 
twenty feet, as against more than five hundred feet less than fifteen 
years ago and one hundred feet in England, ninety feet in France and one 
hundred fifty feet in Germany immediately prior to the outbreak of the war. 

Industrial evolution has, in the history of nations, been accompanied 
by a decline in the wood-using customs of the people. While Americans 
will, of course, desire for this nation, always a larger inheritance of na- 
tional resources than other less favored peoples have possessed, it is likely 
that the same drama of changing lumber requirements will be enacted here. 
It is improbable that the annual production of lumber in this country will 
for any substantial period, if ever again, exceed forty billion feet. Last 
year it was less than thirty-two billion feet. Ten years ago it was forty- 
five billion feet. Increases in population will probably be offset by recip- 
rocal changes in the wood-using customs of the people. 

Exports of lumber are not likely to absorb the volume of timber which 
many glittering reports from abroad may have indicated. The export 
trade will undoubtedly increase — and it should. But the nations in the 
greatest need of materials for construction are so thoroughly committed, 
through tradition and sentiment, to the use of other materials such as 
brick and tile and stone, that the predicted avalanche of demand for 
American lumber is in doubt. 

Were a permanent forestation enterprise established in this country 
on the basis, for example, of the system used successfully in Sweden, on 
a one hundred year period of rotation, a supply of merchantable standing 
timber of two trillion feet with a proper distribution of age classes, would 
probably be adequate reasonably to meet the needs which may be fore- 
casted. We have today according to present standards of estimate, nearly 
three trillion feet of merchantable timber most of which is relatively ma- 
ture. Roughly speaking therefore there is a "slack" of nearly one trillion 
feet. Supplemented by probable new growth of not less than three-quarters 
of a trillion more, this supply should last approximately fifty years. Dur- 
ing this period provision will have been made for making the remaining 
two trillion or its equivalent, self -perpetuating, or else "timber shortage" 



6d 

will have ceased to be a threat and will have become an accomplished fact. 
So much then for the quantity of standing saw timber permanently 
needed in this country — approximately two trillion feet of distributed age 
classes, and about half a century to accomplish the proper distribution. 
Even with the additional provision appropriate for woodlots and other 
acreage furnishing fire-wood, posts, iwles, and miscellaneous wood products, 
it is apparent that, in this country as a whole, there is enough mountainous, 
rough and waste land, wholly profitless for agriculture but suitable for 
forestation, to supply its permanent timber needs. Fortunately therefore an 
adequate forest policy need not, at any point, conflict with an equally wise 
national policy for agricultural and general industrial development. 

What Species of Timber Should Be Perpetuated m the Forests of the 
United States? But in the definition of forest policy, the determination of 
necessary quantity of timber is not enough. Of equal importance is the 
selection of species and quality. 

If nature, unaided and undisturbed, were to be the universal regulator 
of all economic and industrial processes, then doubtless, in the long course 
of time, most if not all of the species in the original timber stands would 
be replaced by natural re-growth. There have been more than one hundred 
different species of American woods having substantial commercial uses 
and nature if given a fair chance, would in time replace nearly all of them. 
Northern Ohio and Indiana would have some softwoods ; the Miami Valley 
would have fine walnut; the southern counties at the big bend in the 
river would have big sycamores. Ohio, Indiana and Illinois would all have 
great forests of oak, elm, ash, hickory and a generous mixture of scores 
of other species native to their soil. 

But is that what we want when we plan a permanent forest policy? 
Is it necessarily true, because gum trees are native to Ohio soil, that the 
replacement of gum should be encouraged? Or, because woodworking in- 
dustries established in the state have been using hickory, that forests of 
hickory should be replaced in Indiana? 

Conceivably might it not perhaps be wiser and more profitable for those 
in Ohio who want gum to get it from Arkansas and Tennessee where it 
grows to better quality? And for those wood-using industries of Indiana 
which have been accustomed to use hickory, to learn to use, if possible, 
ash, or elm, or other species of more rapid growth but having appropriate 
physical properties. 

These are only illustrative of an important principle, namely, that 
within substantial limits, the peculiar industrial advantage of using a 
given species of wood may be outweighed by the advantage of using a 
species of timber that can be regrown more quickly and at lower cost. 

For commercial purposes it is well known many siiecies are readily 
interchangeable. Practically the same useful things that have heretofore 
been made from more than one hundred commercial species of hard and 
softwoods may be made from ten different species wisely selected. Where 
there is substantial similarity in physical qualities and virtual equality of 
fitness for given industrial uses, those species should be perpetuated which 
can be grown to commercially useful size in the shortest time at the lowest 
cost The entire elimination from the forests of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois 



60 

of many of their native species, provided adequate substitutes were pi'e- 
served, would therefore involve no necessary impairment of the welfare of 
their industries or of their people. 

In the administration of the permanent plan of forestation there should 
be interference with nature sufficient at least to secure the perpetuation 
of the species which are economically the most useful and to secure the 
elimination from the commercial forests of other species less useful and 
more expensive to reproduce. Perhaps we have not always given adequate 
consideration to this principle of selection of species in the effort to pro- 
vide a permanent future supply of timber for the wood-using industries of 
these states. 

How Geographically, Should the Forests Be Distributed? The third 
great factor in the determination of the economic position of state forests is 
their geographical distribution. If it may be assumed that the lumber 
requirements of the nation will be adequately met by a volume of growing 
forests, with properly distributed age classes, sufficient to yield during an 
estimated average one hundred year period of rotation a total of four 
trillion feet ; and assuming that the forest lands on the average for both 
softwood and hardwood will yield ten thousand feet of mature timber per 
acre, not more than four hundred million acres under permanent foresta- 
tion will be required. This is about one-fifth of the land area of the United 
States and is approximately twice the area of the present public forests, 
national, state and municipal. 

Less than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States is now 
in improved farms. About one-fifth more is attached to farms but is un- 
improved. Nearly one-fifth is at present arid waste land useful for neither 
agriculture nor forestation, much of it capable of reclamation by irrigation. 
There is available, therefore, land sufficient to support a great expansion 
in agricultural activity and to provide fully for future forest supplies. 

The softwood forests will probably be located in the mountain regions 
of the west, east, and south, the sand plains of the lake states and the low- 
lands along many parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The hardwoods 
will perhaps be confined largely to the southern Appalachians, rough 
country along the Ohio river, the middle and lower Mississippi and their 
tributaries, to some of the uplands of the lake states and to the farm 
woodlots which are characteristic of the agricultural enterprises in the 
central states and the middle west. 

Forest policies by states individually or by groups are formulated under 
a substantial handicap because of their lack of control over the policies 
and activities of other states. No single state can intelligently determine 
how large its forests should be, what kinds of timber they should contain, 
and on what lands they should be located without giving consideration to 
the policies of neighboring states and of the nation at large. The products 
of the forests are sold in interstate commerce which ignores all state 
boundaries. A centralized control over the forestry activities of all the 
states would make practicable a national forest policy that would secure 
the most efficient possible adaptation of the quantity, quality and location 
of the forests to the needs of the industries for which they must continue 
to provide the raw material. If state lines do not determine the markets 



61 

for the finished product or the channels through which they may be 
sold, neither should they determine the character, or the distribution of 
the raw material— the forests themselves. 

This local handicap to state forest policies is important but it is not 
decisive. Each state individually may, in the formation of its plan, as 
you yourselves are doing here, recognize the need not only of an under- 
standing with its neighbors, but also of co-ordination with the larger plan 
for the forests of the nation as a whole through a powerful federal agency, 
such as the Forest Service. 

Who Should Grow Forests? Finally arises the question: Who should 
grow and own forests? Considerably less than two million acres of forest 
lands is today publicly owned, and some of that is not in timber. Prob- 
ably more than two million additional acres now in private holding will 
be required as a permanent source of timber supply to the nation. May 
private enterprise be counted upon to provide this raw material for the 
distant future use of American industries? I do not think so. Men who 
have bought timber and built saw mills are foresters and interested in a 
business way in the perpetuation of the forests only in the same sense and 
to the same degree that coal operators are geologists and interested in the 
perpetuation of the coal supply. The business of the lumber manufacturer 
is to make boards out of the trees which he already owns, not to make more 
trees out of which some one else some day may make more boards. 

By fortuitous circumstances he is usually an owner of cut-over land. 
This land may be the most useful for permanent forestation, but the owner- 
ship of such land does not put the owner under obligation to engage in a 
reforestation enterprise unless he elects to do so. He will not, and he 
should not, in the public interest, choose to reforest his lands unless to do so 
would be a profitable enterprise. Even effort, misguided though it is, to 
compel through legislation, reforestation of private logged-off lands, such 
as has been not infrequently proposed, will not avail against the economic 
laws which direct everywhere men's industrial activities. Such legislation 
would secure, throughout the country at large, not a replacement of the 
forests through private enterprise but instead a wide-spread reversion to 
the state of the private lands thus designated for reforestation. Legisla- 
tion making private forestry compulsory, irrespective of its profitableness 
or its prospect of profit would produce therefore not trees, but substantially 
the confiscation of the land upon which it was intended that the trees 
should grow. But a "forest policy" that does not produce forests is not a 
forest policy. 

Private enterprise is notably not suited to undertakings which do not 
bear fruit for from fifty to one hundred years and it cannot wisely be 
counted upon to provide a substantial future supply of standing timber, of 
which large size and superior quality are essential. In the case of spruce 
for pulp manufacture it is possible tha'. private enterprise may be relied 
upon because the period of tree crop rotation is relatively short and size 
and quality are by no means such important factors as they are in the case 
of timber for use in lumber manufacture. 

Similarly softwood timber of some species on southern lands frequently 
reaches merchantable size within forty years. But this is not true of the 



62 

hardwoods nor of the softwood timber that will produce wide, clear lumbet , 
or large dimension timbers. 

The Position of the State Forests. For the reforestation of the inferior 
grades of softwoods private enterprise may be adequate. But for the 
perpetuation of the superior grades of softwoods and of the desirable hard- 
wood species, such as are native to the soil of the Ohio valley, no adequate 
provision will have been made until state forests or federal forests shall 
have been established for that purpose. The hardwoods are of peculiar 
concern to the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. But there can be but 
little prosiiect of permanent success in their forest enterprises until these 
state's shall have committed themselves definitely to the establishment and 
maintenance of state forests, and these not as an experiment, but as a 
business. 

The quantity, location and species of timber with which the appropriate 
lands of these states should be reforested can wisely be detemined only in 
relation to the policy which may be established for the nation as a whole. 
State pride might encourage us to seek for our own industries and our 
own people, comparative independence of the sources of timber supply out- 
side the state. But it is not impossible that the interests of these three 
states may be permanently best served if the bulk of their future supply, 
for example, of oak lumber should come from West Virginia or Kentucky or 
Tennessee. There is essentially no greater reason that Indiana should 
supply her own people with oak from her own forests than that Nebraskan 
homes should be built of "Nebraskan pine", provided that the land, the 
labor, and the capital which Indiana would have devoted to the growing of 
oak timber could have been directed more profitably into other lines of 
enterprise. 

The test of true conservation is not therefore in the size of the forests, 
or in the quality of the timber standing therein, but in the fitness of the 
plan of forestation to contribute to the most eflicient possible utilization of 
the state's resources of land and capital and to the most profitable appli- 
cation of the labor of its people. "Conservation" of any other kind is not 
conservation, but waste. 

The specific forest needs of the three states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, 
cannot, it is true, be determined by the total forest needs of the entire 
nation, but they can be largely guided by them. Although timber generally 
is still plentiful there is a growing scarcity of a few important species 
which may properly cause concern to our industries and people. The fer- 
tile lands of the Miami and Wabash valleys once carried the finest walnut 
and oak forests in the middle west. Today the same lands produce the 
finest corn crops in the Ohio river valley. Fifty years ago pioneer farmers 
in southern Ohio were having neighborhood "log-rollings" at which they 
burned millions of feet of black walnut trees like those for which the War 
Department during the war literally scoured the country to find material 
for gun stocks. The heavy hewn beams of the old barns in the Ohio 
valley are of wood that now makes table tops for kings and many an old 
granary door would make fine furniture. 

The industrial life of these states is today in their farms and pastures, 
their packing houses, canneries, steel works, refineries and factories. Their 



63 

prosperity is largely due to their farms, and agricultural development would 
have been impossible without the sacrifice of the finest of their forests. 
Nations and states, like individiials, cannot "eat their cake and have it, 
too." 

Now, we are endeavoring to reclaim a part of this lost heritage of 
forests. Removal of timber and the rapid vanishing of nearby sources of 
supply are focusing public attention more and more upon the need of prompt 
and systematic provision for the future. There is enough time but not too 
much, in which to put forestation in the United States upon a sound and 
permanent basis. But there will be no definite or assuring accomplishment 
until the nation and the several states themselves shall have assumed this 
obligation as their own. 

The fertile valley lands of the Ohio, the Wabash and the Miami have 
figured prominently in the agricultural development and the industrial 
prosperity of the central west. 

In the great joint forestry enterprise which you are here planning the 
hill lands may be reclaimed. They too may help to make this prosperity 
secure and permanent and the forests on the hills in the big bend of the 
Ohio river may yet become a factor in the industrial life of these states 
as vital perhaps as the farms on the banks of the Wabash. (Applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER: I take special pleasure in presenting to you 
Professor Rothrock of Indiana University, who will address you for a few 
moments. (Applause) 

PROF. ROTHROCK: Mr. Toastmaster and gentlemen, I am not 
a forester at all, I know very little about forestry, although I would like 
to know a great deal more. This matter appeals to me in a personal way. I 
like to see things saved and it seems to me that our forests are well worth 
saving. Perhaps we can take steps at this conference that will lead into 
something, so that the future legislature will give us more authority in the 
conserving of forests. (Applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER: A meeting of lumbermen or any industry con- 
nected with the lumber industry held in Indianapolis would not be com- 
plete without a few words from Mr. Barnaby, of Greencastle. (Applause) 

MR. BARNABY : It has always been that saw-mill men have been 
blamed with misusing our forests. I am sure I don't know why it is, 
because we only use the lumber as necessity demands. But I am glad to 
see this company of men so alive and interested in forest conservation. I 
have been attending lumber conventions for something like thirty years 
and at their annual meetings we always hear from some forestry man, and 
while he is talking, everybody goes to sleep. I don't know why they 
don't become more interested, but they don't seem to. They need a bunch 
of men like you to get them stirred up. The need for conservation is 
growing daily more and more apparent. Right now there is a great de- 
mand for white oak and we are having difficulty in getting all that we 
need. The men who manufacture material from white oak are at a loss 
to know where their future supply is coming from. 

I don't know how we are going to get the people of our country aroused 
but I think it is up to the nation as a whole as well as the states. I don't 
believe that the individuals alone can do it. (Applause) 



64 

MR. BOOKWALTER: It is not our desire nor purpose to draw out 
this program to a tedious lengtli, but I think that even though you have the 
opportunity of hearing from him tomorrow, that we would like to have 
just a few words from him now. He is the man whom I consider to be 
the most useful citizen of this capital of Indiana, a man who has always 
unselfishly worked for the betterment of his home town. It is to me a great 
personal pleasure to present to you for just a few remarks, Mr. Richard 
Lieber, of this city. (Applause) 

MR. LIEBER : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, this evening I was so 
happy as I sat here quietly in the background and listened to the papers 
that have been given. I have been thinking of the times that I have had to 
sit up there at the speakers' table waiting for my turn to come, and wait- 
ing to get out of my system the paper I had been asked to give and now 
our toastma&ter asks me to speak. I hope this is as far as we will go. 

I am reminded of a little incident which I witnessed when I was a 
young man living in England. It had been raining for several days when 
one night it turned cold very suddenly.* The next morning the streets were 
extremely slippery, a serious matter because of the hilly country. As I 
was watching, an old gentleman from across the street started out very 
carefully, picking his way along on icy pavement. He was getting along 
very nicely until a young person came out, paying no attention to the 
change and started down the hill just behind the old man. Very suddenly 
she slipped and the next I knew they were both rolling down the hill 
together and when they reached the bottom, she was found sitting on 
top of the old gentleman. He said, "I beg your pardon, madam, but I 
presume you will have to get off; this is as far as we go." (Laughter and 
applause) 

MR. BOOKWALTER: Well, Mr. Lieber, this is as far as- we will go 
tonight. 

ADJOURNMENT. 



THURSDAY MORNING SESSION 

The meeting was called to order at 9:30 A. M. with Senator Guthrie 
presiding. 

THE CHAIRMAN : It is far past the hour at which we were scheduled 
to begin this morning, so I think we had better come to order. We have 
a lot of work to be done this morning. I am going to ask all of you to 
take particular notice of Mr. William's paper and I hope you will be able 
to remember the points he makes. I take it that we had better go right 
through with the program and carry it out as it is. We will first hear 
from Dr. C. E. Thorne, Director of Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. 
(Applause) 

MR. SECREST : I regret that Mr. Thorne could not attend the confer- 
ence and present this subject to you. It was impossible, however, for him 
to be here, and he has requested me to present to you an outline of what 
we think should constitute our program of forestry for Ohio. 

The maintenance of the forests concerns the public interests as well as 
those of individuals who are directly dependent in some manner upon 



G5 

wood as a source of raw material. The various functions of forests are 
so vital to the welfare of a state that their depletion cannot be permitted 
to longer escape the attention of the public. 

Private ownership in the main has failed to provide for the renewal 
of the forest after cutting. The timbers of commerce have continued to 
come largely from the original forest growth. The second growth available 
for use is meagre, and results from a let alone policy rather than any 
effort on the part of woodland owners to produce a second crop to succeed 
the virgin growth. The total- available saw timber in the state does not 
exceed 1,100,000,000 feet, and this is by no means first quality material. 
The wood using industries dependent upon hardwoods are rapidly absorb- 
ing the limited stumpage, and they will soon be compelled to shut down 
or go elsewhere. The consumers of hardwoods are finding good grades 
increasingly diflicult to obtain and at higher prices. The hardwood timber 
supply is limited in this country as compared with that of softwoods, and 
the sources of first growth material from the states that now have a reserve 
will soon cease to exist. 

The effect of forest depletion upon communities within the inherent 
timber section of the state is also serious enough in consequence to engage 
the attention of the public. Small centers of population which within the 
last few decades were dependent to a considerable degree upon a liveli- 
hood derived from the various factors of the lumbering industry are no 
longer able to enjoy the modest prosperity which was theirs. Since the 
passing of the merchantable timber many small towns and villages have 
lost an important source of income, and the reaction is reflected in depopu- 
lation, vacant houses and abandoned wood working plants. Nor is this 
alone the only loss to communities and the commonwealth. The depleted 
forest lands of no practicable utility aside from timber production, after 
having been stripped of all merchantable growth are permitted to become 
devastated by fire, thus further reducing their usefulness by destroying 
even their potentiality. Such lands, and there are several hundred thousand 
acres in Ohio, can hope for little development by virtue of private ownership 
under present existing conditions, and there must be a material change 
in economic conditions and in governmental regulations before private 
capital will undertake forest renewal. 

Those who have been in close touch with the forestry situation in Ohio 
are of the opinion that the state must adopt a policy in which positive steps 
are taken to maintain and perpetuate the forests now existing on inherent 
forest soils and to provide for reforestation where needed on non-agricul- 
tural or idle lands, and that this must be done in a manner that will 
accomplish the purpose with the least possible delay. The program pro- 
posed for Ohio is believed to embrace the greatest needs at the present time 
and it may be modified or supplemented as future conditions warrant. 

Publicly owned forests are undoubtedly a basic factor in a program for 
increased timber production. The public through state, county and munic- 
ipal government, is the agency that can best take over cut-over and wild 
lands and provide the necessary protection and maintenance for the pro- 
duction of successive crops of timber. Nor is this a problem of the produc- 
tion of timber only. It is economy for the state to utilize all land to its 



fi6 

fullest extent. Productive land adds to the wealth of a community and 
state by direct and indirect means. Idle and wild lands are a liability. 

Again the function of state forests would be extended to other purposes 
of utility. They would serve to protect stream flow and the maintenance of 
navigable streams. The proposed public forests for Ohio are in a section of 
broken topography and in close proximity to the Ohio river. 

The state needs, furthermore, publicly owned forests f<fr natural recrea- 
tion grounds. There are virtually no places existing with proper facilities 
where citizens of Ohio can secure camping and outing privileges, other than 
those under private ownership. Trespassing and going onto another's land 
even with permission is not attractive to most people. State forests with 
appropriate camping sites would attract people to them. It would add to 
their usefulness and would serve as a means of education in the aims and 
purposes of forestry, and would gain support for a policy of forest conser- 
vation. 

Ohio has approximately 500,000 acres of land which should come under 
public ownership, at least until economic conditions warrant returning all 
or part to private ownership under a guarantee of the continuance of 
sustained yield forests. Out present program contemplated the acquisi- 
tion of 200,000 acres of cut-over and wild lands in some of the southern 
Ohio counties. Such purchase would not entail a contiguous area, but 
would comprise several tracts. A recent detailed survey of Scioto Co. 
indicates the possibility of acquiring some 75,000 acres in virtually a con- 
tinuous body. In any case the proposed total acquisition would be so 
grouped as to render administration easily and economically applied. 
Authority to purchase lands for state forests was conferred upon the 
Board of Control of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station and suffi- 
cient appropriations secured to make a beginning, although the two tracts 
purchased are devoted to experimental and demonstration purposes. An 
effort therefore must be made to procure adequate appropriations or bond 
issues to carry out the purchase program as adopted. 

Municipalities can and should take part in the program of forest con- 
servation. There is ample opportunity in Ohio for a considerable number 
of cities to acquire lands on broken topography suitable for forests, con- 
tiguous or in close proximity to the corporate limits. Such tracts would 
often be partially wooded with native forest, and would require no great 
amount of artificial forestation. These areas could be converted into 
natural parks for the benefit of the urban dweller, and at the same time 
be a factor in timber production. While requiring a monetary outlay 
at the outset, municipal forests could ultimately be made to pay their way, 
and in time yield a revenue. It would be well for the people of cities to 
contrast the usefulness of the relatively inexpensive municipal forest with 
some of the ostentatious and freakish parks that adorn some of our cities. 
Ohio now has two city forests, those of Oberlin and Cincinnati. 

Other political subdivisions such as counties and townships should also 
be authorized to acquire forests or forest parks. In this connection there 
would be the opportunity to preserve certain forested scenic features. 

Forest protection is coextensive in importance with the acquisition of 
publicly owned forests. An adequate system for the control and suppres- 



67 

sion of forest fires is needed in certain counties of the state. Fire injury 
of any consequence exists only on the inherent forest lands of large con- 
tiguous holdings. The smaller bodies of forests, mostly farmers' wood- 
lands are rarely damaged by fires. Legislation will be needed and will be 
requested for putting into effect the necessary machinery for fire protection 
where needed in southern Ohio. 

Grazing of woodlands has become a fixed habit with the farmer, and 
in general is unprofitable since woodlands are poor pasture, and pastured 
woodlands are poor forest. A campaign of education has been directed 
against this practice and it is believed has accomplished some result. It is 
probable that this problem can best be solved by educational means. For- 
tunately grazing is more prevalent on the woodlands of the better agricul- 
tural sections of the state, where land is high priced and the woodlands 
will soon give way to farm crops. Granting the realization of the purchase 
program of such areas as are practicable for public ownership, the bulk 
of the forests of the state would still be in private hands. Greater assis- 
tance to the owners of woodlands by the state by means of definite advice, 
more comprehensive working plans, fire protection, equitable taxation, 
adequate research in forest problems, will avail much to promote the prac- 
tice of private forestry, but it is altogether probable that it will not meet 
the needs. Indeed this doubt seems to be well founded in the experience 
of the states which have had seemingly well established policies for some- 
time. 

Definite assistance where the public assumes the financial burden, the 
attendant risks through the long period of time in carrying the timber crop 
from the beginning well along to maturity would seem to be required if 
any general results are obtained. We are inclined to favor, therefore, that 
upon application of the owner of certain classes of timberland the state 
take over the land and take charge of the renewal of the forest and its 
management, the cost to be charged against the owner, and is to be a lien 
against the timber. The burdens of taxation, fire risks, long time invest- 
ment, etc., could thus be assumed by the state and at time of final cutting, 
which would be under the supervision of the state, the cost charges would 
be obligated by the owner. The owner, however, should have the option 
of discharging the obligation at any time upon payment to the state of the 
accrued costs of reforestation and administration together with a conserv- 
ative rate of interest. A plan somewhat similar to that above has been in 
operation in Massachusetts for some years, and though it has apparently 
been limited to the artificial reforestation of idle lands, has been quite 
successful in operation. It would seem that if the plan could be extended 
to second growth and cut-over lands, partially or fully stocked as well as 
to purely planting projects, its usefulness would be greatly, extended. 

Artificial reforestation must necessarily be given considerable promi- 
nence in any forestry program. This phase, however, is of minor conse- 
quence as compared with the renewal of the native woodland through 
natural regeneration. The areas wherein planting must be done, however, 
will increase rapidly unless steps are taken to protect and maintain the 
native growth or inherent forest soUs. 

The state should give encouragement to private owners in planting waste 



68 

and idle lands, slaelterbelts, etc. To this end it should be prepared to give 
assistance which will promote the most economical formation and suc- 
cessful development of forest plantations. 

The state should establish forest nurseries where planting stock is 
grown in large quantities and could be distributed to landowners free of 
charge or at a cost not to exceed cost of production. Forest nurseries are 
now maintained but the output is not suflBcient to furnish any large quan- 
tities of stock. 

Forest utilization and marketing of forest products are important fea- 
tures of an adequate forest policy. Economy in the use and disposal of 
timber has a definite salient influence on the conservation of merchantable 
timber. The Ohio Department of Forestry has given attention to these 
problems, and has established a service by which woodland owners are 
given assistance relative to timber estimates, values, methods of logging, 
marketing, etc. There should be co-operation between woodland owners 
in marketing timber. It would enable them to dispose of their different 
grades of timber to better advantage, and would often prevent waste and 
misutilization of grades. 

A land classification is now in progress and it should be pushed to 
completion as rapidly as possible. By this means it will be possible to 
determine the amounts, classes and location of lands suited to forest pro- 
duction. Along with land classification a survey of the present forest 
resources should be made, comprising the present supplies and the future 
potentialities. 

The needs for more extensive and better organized research work would 
be evident in putting into effect the program as proposed. There is virtually 
a virgin field in forestry for research work, and more definite knowledge of 
certain phases of forest production and utilization would undoubtedly lead 
to an earlier realization of a workable and satisfactory forest policy. 

We have not proceeded as fast as we would have liked to, but I am not 
discouraged. The outlook for some real accomplishments in the near 
future is pretty bright. The war has had a good effect and I feel that we are 
going to get something done that will be worth while. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN : I have been particularly interested in what Mr. 
Secrest had to say because conditions in Ohio and Indiana are practically 
the same. I think that Ohio has much larger tracts of timber than Indiana 
has, but this will be interesting when the discussion comes up as to how we 
are to acquire the timber lands. 

The next speaker to appear is Dr. F. W. Shepardson, Director of Regis- 
tration and Education. Dr. Shepardson will speak of Illinois state forest 
policies. (Applause) 

DR. SHEPARDSON: The representatives from Illinois to this confer- 
ence came to listen rather than to talk, to learn rather than to teach. Our 
program in Illinois for forestry is just tentative ; our policy — we have none. 
We have not done as much as Ohio and Indiana, and I am afraid that 
hitherto we have not been much impressed with what either of those two 
states has done, as it has been unfolded here in the meeting of this confer- 
ence. 



69 

If I were to stop there, I should certainly do injustice to Illinois. Be- 
cause there are some things that we have done which ought to be brought to 
your attention. These things, to my mind are hopeful, especially in view of 
the prevailing sentiment that the three states along the Ohio river have 
more or less common interests. 

When I was appointed to my present position, I had no idea what I was 
expected to do. I found among other things that there was to be a Board 
of Natural Resources and Conservation. That title appealed to me. It 
had vision, and seemed to imply that the state expected that something was 
going to be done in conservation line. I studied the make-up of that board. 
There was an expert in geology to co-operate with the state in the geological 
survey. There was an expert in natural history. There were experts in 
chemistry and sanitation. There was an expert in forestry. 

The next question came as to whether Illinois had accomplished any- 
thing along the lines of forest preservation. It was found that in May, 
1893, Mr. G. W. McCluer in connection with Professor T. J. Burrill of the 
University of Illinois made a report on forestry in Illinois. This is an 
extremely interesting document. In a general way he showed that there 
are eighty species of forest trees in Illinois besides many large shrubs. 
The first appropriation for forestry was made on March 11, 1869, one 
thousand dollars being set aside for trees and seeds. Experimental plant- 
ing was begim by the University of Illinois in the spring of 1871. This 
report is found in Bulletin 26 of the Agricultural Experiment Station at 
Champaign. Its general conclusions are that the land in Illinois which 
was fit for wheat and corn was too valuable to be used for forest trees ; 
that well timbered land sold at a less price per acre than adjoining lands 
that had been cleared or than prairie land of the same productiveness. The 
value of the timber was less than the cost of clearing and bringing under 
cultivation. The report continued, that, apart from economic views, the 
planting of trees had higher and other claims for consideration. These in- 
cluded the equalization of temperature, the better distribution of moisture, 
better sustaining the running streams and minimizing and reducing the 
danger of destructive floods, the checking of heavy winds, the better pro- 
tection of the crops from the destructive influence of air moving too rap- 
idly, and the aesthetic value of trees used as ornaments. 

On May 5, 1903, a resolution was adopted in the state legislature lament- 
ing the diminishing of the forest area of Illinois and asking that the De- 
partment of Agriculture of the United States of America be requested to 
make an investigation as to the condition of the forests and to make rec- 
ommendations for preserving what remained and for encouraging the prop- 
agation, growth and protection of forests in general within the state. 

In 1910 another study was made in co-operation with Mr. Peters by 
two representatives of the forest service, this report being published in 
1911 under the title "Forest Conditions in IlUnois." The survey which 
was made was thorough so far as it went. The report shows what various 
kinds of trees were to be found in lUinois and it was illustrated by photo- 
graphs which brought out many points of interest. 

Nothing else seems to have been done imtil the adoption of the Civil 
Administrative Code. This provided for a Board of Natural Resources and 



70 

Conservation to advise regarding the scientific work of the state, forestry 
being mentioned as one specific phase of it, this to be represented on the 
board mentioned by an expert on the subject. Under the direction of this 
board, Professor John M. Coulter, the expert in forestry, was instructed to 
present a report on possibilities along this line.- As a result of his recom- 
mendations which followed some investigational work by graduate students 
under him, the Board of Natural Resources and Conservation recommended 
that a forester be employed to niake a preliminary study of the needs and 
possibilities of the situation. An item was included in the budget of the 
Natural History Survey to provide for the salary of the forester whose 
work began July 1st, 1919. 

Now I think I have recounted the history of forestry in Illinois. I want 
to call attention to the fact that we have in the vicinity of Chicago, in 
Cook coimty, forest preserves, that have led many people to think seriously 
of this question of forestry, and of the desirability of preserving trees. 

As we look forward, what is the situation? The first thing we did was 
to ask the legislature for an appropriation to start something and they 
did give us a small amount which we plan to use to make a survey which 
will reveal in printed form the various conditions which have been discussed 
in this room during the last day. We hope to use this for the purpose of 
stimulating interest in preserving the forests of Illinois. We want to be 
able to provide valuable information so that at the next session of the leg- 
islature, we may be able to get a larger appropriation and then really 
start work as it should be started. We have made the right kind of a 
beginning. We gave careful consideration to the kind of a man we should 
have for state forester. We found one who pleased us and with whom we 
are increasingly pleased as the days go by. He is working under handicaps 
of not having enough help in men or money, but he has made a good be- 
ginning. Now then, the question is, what can we do in the future? There 
again we come to some peculiar conditions which confront us. Illinois is 
in the midst of a big undertaking — we are now trying the budget system. 
If there is a legislative body which knows nothing of the relation of income 
to outgo, it might easily be induced by argument to make an appropriation 
of a hundred thousand dollars for forestry purposes, but you can't get by 
with this and the budget system. 

We can't get an appropriation unless we can show that we can actually 
give something that will benefit Illinois. This applies to forestry or any- 
thing else. We are now at work on a good roads program which will cost 
us over a hundred million dollars. Not only the roads which the state is 
building, but those of local communities, are being reconstructed. We are 
undertaking a great waterways program in Illinois, and an investment of 
a good many million dollars is going into that, not only for tomorrow but 
for the future. We are engaged in making a topographical survey of Illi- 
nois, in co-operation with the United States Government. We have just 
completed about twenty-three per cent, of the map making. We want to 
publish that just as fast as we can. Incidentally, we have started a little 
bit of work along drainage lines. 

All of these things are working favorably toward forestation, because 
people are being united as they never were before. We have begun to 



71 

realize that Illinois must do things as Illinois, and not as sections of a 
state. We are already co-operating with the Federal Government in the 
topographical survey. In this map-making the ground is being prepared. 
There is this background for study and thought. There have been papers 
prepared, relating to various minor features of forestry. There have been 
small groups of people interested in this thing. And now I come back 
to where I started, saying that the forestry program of Illinois is still 
tentative, and as for a forest policy, we have none. I believe I am also 
justified in saying that Illinois is working on a lot of things which are 
preparing the way for us so that if Ohio, Indiana and Illinois get together, 
working with the Federal Government, doing those things which can be 
done, Illinois will be ready to co-operate, and Illinois will lend its influence, 
not only in the halls of congress, but also at home. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN: "We have all been interested in Dr. Shepardson's 
talk, and I know it will bring out much discussion when we come to that 
point. It interested me, because he admitted that we were ahead of Illinois 
in forestry. All of you are aware that Indiana made some changes in the 
last legislature, and created a Department of Conservation, which covers 
five or six different offices, listing them under this board. After the Gov- 
ernment created this board, which was to commence action thp first of 
April, the board thought only of one man as director of these departments. 
He was a man who took great interest in parks, conservation, had spent a 
good deal of time and money along these lines, and so we selected for this 
position a man who will talk to you now, and who no doubt will give us 
something which will be appreciated. Col. Richard Lieber, Director of Con- 
servation for the State of Indiana. (Applause) 

MR. RICHARD LIEBER: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, at the ban- 
quet last night Mr. Bookwalter referred to an accident which happened 
to a lonely tree in France. That to us, sounded like a strange incident for 
nobody in this country has ever thought of planting trees for the future 
since everybody expects that the remnants of forests that we do have 
should last forever and so save us from the necessity of exerting ourselves. 
Whereas in the old countries of Europe tree planting has become a necessity 
and has been practiced for centuries, we are now just in the early stages 
of considering it. It is not that we are less careful than the other nations, 
not that the other nations are wiser than we are, but it is because neces- 
sity has not yet driven us to it. As matters are shaping up at this time, we 
still have a margin of safety, but is it always wise to use the margin of 
safety? We should be prepared to have that material which is so essen- 
tial, therefore the entire matter of forestry is one of public interest. 

The forestry problem of Indiana must be solved on the basis of public 
welfare. Under this I would include such contributing factors as the 
aesthetic, climatic, recreational and most important, the economical. 

All these elements are contained in the wider scope of a forestry policy 
and so interwoven are they into the public weal that it is doubly neces- 
sary to work out a well defined, at times even a narrowed down, plan of 
forest management in order to keep its character free from confusion with 
its attributes. 

The silent woods may be the poet's inspiration, but that is not forestry. 



72 

The white-tailed deer which I hope to see reinstated in its former do- 
main may again give joy to the nature lover and to the sportsmen, but that 
is not forestry. Winding roads through inviting woodlands over which 
travels in super-limousines or in the well-known and popular make, a 
crowd of recreationists more variegated than the motley crew of Chaucer's 
Pilgrims to Canterbury, are a by-product but a by-product only of forestry. 
And even the purer waters of streams, their greater abundance and their 
wholesome influences on climatic conditions are not forestry. 

Forestry is the science of producing wood and keeping it in sustained 
use for the benefit of men. And therefore, again the forestry problem of 
Indiana must be solved on the basis of public welfare. 

Of all the materials that bountiful nature has bestowed on us, none has 
found so many ready uses as wood. For, while the minerals lie dormant 
until we reach out for them, the very life of a tree is full of productiveness 
in the interest of man ; its death only marks a transformation of usefulness. 
For that reason the oft-heard claim that we will find a substitute for wood 
if we run out of trees is a dangerous fallacy, for we human beings need 
trees in order to enjoy the many products thereof, because in a world 
without trees we would not need any further substitutes having renounced 
our place to the reign of billions of insects. 

So again we see how forestry has its ramifications in all human en- 
deavor, how it is essential to human welfare — nay, to its very existence. 
Of late years there has come over many people in our state a keen realiza- 
tion that all is not well on that score. More and more it becomes patent 
that private ownership of forest land has been a round failure. 

We have spent a great amount of energy and a considerable sum of 
money attempting to convince and encourage the private land owner in 
the practice of forestry with but little result. We cannot escape the fact 
that private ownership of forests and timberland is possible only, if imme- 
diate cutting is contemplated. It is impossible in the sense of forest 
administration. 

When we condense our material, we find that about the only advantage 
in forestry practice that we can offer to the private owner, is the improve- 
ment of aesthetic and climatic conditions — surely a small boon for long 
risks and short profits. We cannot say it is a profitable investment because 
under present conditions it is not. Furthermore, the present disadvantages 
of private forestry are many. The income from the land used for agri- 
cultural, horticultural, and grazing purposes, for instance, is greater and 
is received dally, weekly, monthly, semi-annually or annually. Intensive 
agriculture gives an outlet for man-power and increases the local popula- 
tion, improves the public roads system which contributes to desirable social 
factors, together with establishing a greater number of churches, and 
social centers, and increasing the population of the school. With our 
waning forests our saw mills are disappearing and in some communities 
only one, or not even one remains which means no competition and a rela- 
tive slump in the price of stumpage. The people of these districts will soon 
not know how to haul logs or have the necessary equipment for handling 
timber. The rapid development of the dairy business, the recent intro- 
duction and wide use of the silo, added knowledge of certain forage plants, 



73 

the high price of competing food products, all go to form an economic 
bulwark against which private forestry cannot stand. No agency except 
fire is so destructive of our woodlands as the grazing business which is 
now throttling our remnant forests. 

With this in mind we are face to face with the fact that there are in 
the state large industries that depend upon the forests for their raw mater- 
ial and the employment of thousands of people. These great commercial 
enterprises are confronted with inevitable dissolution if some means is not 
worked out by which their future supply will be assured. If they go, many 
communities will be practically destroyed and even if the industry can 
afford to bring its raw material from greatly distant and foreign fields, 
the state must repay in a greatly increased cost. 

Forestry in Indiana is not a locjil question, nor is it a political one. It 
is essentially a question which affects the prosperity and happiness of the 
coming generations. 

The situation is acute. We must have a constructive forest policy 
which will establish a permanent timber supply. There is but little hope 
in private interest, although they may be urged into some activity by the 
proper classification of lands with corresponding taxation which will per- 
mit the placing of i)rivate forestry on a profitable basis. 

It is seeming paradox that just as wood is the fuel for the very 
rich or the very poor, so is the tenure of forest land likewise only pos- 
sible for the two extremes ; the millionaire who makes a plaything out of it 
and the poor man whom it supplies with the return of a few wagon-loads 
of railroad ties, hoop-poles or tanbark, to maintain his precarious exis- 
tence. 

This, however, does not include the circumspect farmer whose proi)erly 
arranged woodlots constit«»ite a valuable farm asset, but neither can the 
woodlot be construed a solution of the forestry problem. 

We cannot shun the fact that the question is one for the public and it 
remains for the state and the municipality to meet the situation. The state 
can carry the investment safer than the individual. A long time invest- 
ment is no object. It is the duty of the state to have a forest at hand for 
national safety. 

When in August, 1914, the world was set afire, we admitted in tlie 
following years that we were unprepared for war. Isn't it plain to us 
now that primarily we were unprepared for peace. And when we did arise 
in our might, what was it that lent substance to our energy and to our 
devotion but our wonderful natural resources. 

Colonel Graves has told us and from Colonel Greeley we will hear a 
similar story— what part American timber has played in the war. If we 
could have that mighty contril»ution presented to us in one bill it would 
readily open our eyes to the immediate need of replacement. , 

This time we still had the substance. Let not another emergency arise 
and find us wanting. 

Intensive growing of timber is work beyond the strength of the indi- 
vidual. It is more than a mere economic need ; it is a solemn, patriotic 
duty for it aims to preserve the integrity of a nation. 

Deep significance lies in the fact that our fore-fathers beheld the forest 



74 

with awe and reverence and attributed supernatural forces to its being. 
Tlie cities and municipalities in the past timidly began with parks, but 
parks are not forestry. The Federal Government in some states has cour- 
ageously plunged into the maintenance of public forests. The time has 
come when Indiana should follow suit on a large scale ; the state as well as 
its municipalities. The extent to which they should engage in forestry will 
be determined by equating the value of the profits on the forest with the 
profits that might be obtained on the same land from agricultural crops 
including grazing. At least the location of public forests would be deter- 
mined by this method, because it has always been axiomatic with foresters 
that land with high agricultural possibilities should be used for that pur- 
pose. 

State owned forests would be in large bodies, hence, could be more eco- 
nomically administered and the management would be under trained for- 
esters which would insure the maximum of income. Again, forests in 
large bodies would afford opportunities for revenue from game, from 
xise as a hunting preserve and from park privileges in general. 

The time for the inaiTguration of state forests for Indiana is today. We 
cannot afford to delay any longer. We must go to work at once and find 
the most economical locations ; the method of financing ; the administration 
and work out the great mass of detail consequent upon such a project. 
We cannot intelligently speak of the hundreds or thousands of acres, but 
rather in hundreds of thousands of acres, because we must get out of the 
time worn rut we have been running in, and realize that the question is 
large and pressing and that only by the intelligent management of himdreds 
of thousands of acres of forest can we hope to establish a permanent sup- 
ply of Indiana hardwood. 

The biggest problem is to place before the public the urgency of the 
situation ; the necessity of action and responsibility that rests upon the 
civic body. Thankfully ! the large upheaval caused by the world war 
has aroused the public from its old lethargy to a keen appreciation of its 
power and responsibility. There must be launched at once a campaign of 
education, through the schools and mails and the press, setting forth the 
present conditions of our timber supply and the requirements which will 
make it possible for the great wood-using industries to continue. Pains- 
taking investigation is necessary to produce the authentic information with 
which the public must become acquainted. 

The Department of Conservation is a willing instrument and I hope that 
it may prove an able one to make the people of our state acquainted with 
the prevailing condition. Together with Ohio and Illinois we have stated 
the purpose of our conference to be "an arousing of the public and wood- 
using industries to the need of action if our future timber supply is to 
be assured, to formulate a practical working policy of state forestry, out- 
line a comprehensive legislative program and secure adequate legislative 
backing." 

When we adjourn this meeting tonight after we have learned even 
more from the moving pictures that we are to see, then the real work 
should begin. It has been my pleasure to consult with a few of the gentle- 
men and we agreed that the following would be the best plan to conserve 



75 

the work of the conference, namely, that each state should form a Forestry 
Propaganda Committee of any size they wish to make it, have the committee 
select three men to serve on an Executive Committee— these men to be 
men connected vsrith a wood-using industry and in sympathy with our 
movement. The committee should meet at an appointed place and outline 
the plan in general to be followed out simultaneously in the three states. 
The Executive Committees should carry the information to the state com- 
mittees and make their particular wishes known to the governing body. 
The object is that we will be able to preserve the work that we have done 
here, keep 'in touch with each other, obtain the assistance of the Federal 
Government and put ourselves in a position wherever the legislature meets 
to assist in the formation of proper legislation. 

In conclusion I wish to say that if the Department of Conservation had 
the autocratic ix)wer to bestow great blessings upon the people by its use, 
we would disdain to use it. For a finer sensibility of the purposes of a 
republican form of government teaches and invariably returns us to the 
full realization that lasting good can only come through the public voice 
of an enlightened electorate. In full security and confidence of its final 
decision we rest our case. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN : I know you have all been interested in the very able 
paper which we have just had presented and will have a few questions 
about it later. Now we will hear from Mr. Marcus Schaff, State Forester 
of Michigan, on the subject of "State Nurseries." (Applause) 

MR. MARCUS SCHAAF: Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen: If forests 
are to be grown, and in our opinion they will be grown but for obvious 
reasons only or at least principally by the state and federal governments, 
then the forest nursery is an important consideration in any state forest 
policy worthy of the name. The primary object of such a nursery should be 
twofold. First, to insure an unfailing supply of dependable planting stock 
of the proper species and classes needed in the systematic reforestation of 
the state forests, assuming of course that the state already has or is to 
acquire acreage for that purpose. Second, to be able to furnish the neces- 
sary material for the planting of private holdings, not for ornamental 
effect but only for acreage planting with a view to the production of timber. 
Ornamental planting is more or less of a luxury little affecting public 
welfare, but to encourage as far as possible reforestation of private lands 
on a commercial basis the state can well afford to provide suitable stock 
at moderate prices to those desiring it. Under no circumstances, however, 
is it deemed advisable to distribute it free of cost. 

In making provision for the production of planting stock on a large 
scale for use over a wide range of territory a choice of two plans is ad- 
visable. One is to have a single large nursery, located somewhat centrally 
with respect to the region to be supplied, in which all of the work is cen- 
tralized and from which all material is distributed to the various points 
of consumption as needed. The other plan involves the establishment of 
individual and smaller nurseries, one in each of the localities to be planted 
such as the different state forests, or separate districts each of which in- 
cludes a number of forests within easy reach. There are objections as 
well as advantages in either of these arrangements. 



7« 

The principal points in favor of the single central nnrsery ai-e that all 
of the operations are centered at one place and under one head, therefore 
resulting in hetter supervision, greater uniformity of stock and lesser cost 
of production per unit. Less initial investment is required for major 
equipment. The outlay on this accoinit for a small station is comparatively 
heavy and it goes without saying that a large establishment can be equipped 
more cheaply than can a number of smaller similar ones. Consolidation 
and large output mean cheai^er production. Nursery work is intensive and 
highly specialized and as such demands close and constant sui)ervision by 
one well versed thi'ough practical experience in such matters if success is 
to be attained. Consequently one large nursery under the supervisioji of 
a competent man will be better managed than a number of separate places 
under as many different men. And above all, the central nursery is. if 
properly located, a permanent affair whereas the others are in their very 
nature more or less temporary. 

On the other hand there ai-e certain drawbacks that are inseparable 
from the central nursery. The work Iteing of an intensixe kind and there- 
fore requiring much labor, there is the ]x»ssibility when operating on a large 
scale of not obtaining sufficient helj> where production is restricted to one 
place. This is brought to mind all the more forcibly when we realize that 
state forests usually, and naturally, are located in sparsely populated dis- 
tricts. This problem may, however, be largely overcome by dividing activ- 
ities as much as possible between the fall and spring seasons. The central 
nursery must be depended upon to produce all the stock required for plant- 
ing not only in the immediate vicinity but in the remoter parts of the state 
as well. This involves transixjrtation of the plants over long distances, 
which to .say the least is in no wi.se ctmducive to their betterment. Then 
again there are .somewhat greater chances of infestations of dangerous 
diseases where the tendency is to overcrowd or confine great numbers 
on small area.s. Plants, like animals, are more or less subject to epidemics 
where extreme c(mgestion occurs, and ajtplicable to a certain extent in this 
case is the old adage that we sliould not place all of our eggs in one basket. 

Considering the alternative of a system of individual local niu'series the 
following advantages are apparent. The work is distributed and the diffi- 
culty of securing the necessar.v lalior diminishes in proportion. The place 
of production being on the forest itself, the stock is always immediately 
at hand and the delays and possible damage incident upon transportation 
are thus eliminated. Should disaster befall any one of the nurseries 
through any cause, there are the others to fall back upon. 

This same plan carries with it, however, a number of decidedly objec- 
tionable features. The matter of suixrvision and inspection becomes as 
scattered as are the nurseries themselves. The ai'ea of each, and conse- 
quently the output, is apt to be so small as hardly to justify the mainte- 
nance of a qualified suiierintendent in each case and without such super- 
vision, good results cannot be expected. The initial investment put into 
a place of small producing capacity can very easily be made to exceed be- 
yond reason the demands to be met. In many instances, especially on the 
smaller forests, the nursery could not possibly be otherwise than temporary 
and temix»rary nurseries, implying lax or incompetent supervision, inade- 



77 

quate facilities and haphazard methods, are to be always avoided. All of 
which makes for either high cost of production oi- a less dependable supply 
of cheaper stock of inferior quality. 

Our own experience leads us to boliexe that the establishment of one 
Well-equipped, permanent nursery suitably located is by far the more ad- 
visable course to pursue. Or it might perhaps be good policy in a state 
where extremes of soil, climate and si)ecies are encountered, to effect a 
compromise and have two permanent nurseries, one to supply the northern 
and the other the southern half. 

After deciding upon the general location, due attention should he 
given to the selection of the nursery site propei-. There is a difference of 
opinion as to the soil best adapted for the purpose, some even maintain- 
ing that it should be as nearly as iM)ssible identical to that on which 
the trees are to be ultimately .set. Practice, however, does not bear out 
this theory and it is only reasonable to suppose that a healthy, vigorous 
plant grown under the most favorable conditions will do better when 
transplanted to a poorer site than would a less vigorous one. On the other 
hand a plant less favoi'ed in the nursery will respond noticeably when 
transferred to a better soil than that in which it formerly grew. After 
all the soil to a large extent serves only as a physical supporter for the 
trees and by supplying in the way of fertilizers the elements necessary to 
their development good stock can be grown in any properly drained soil. 
In this respect more attention should be given to the physical condition 
of the soil tMn to the mer& question of fertility, since it is easily possible 
and entirely practicable to supply the latter whereas adverse physical 
conditions cannot always be remedied and often only at great expense. A 
deep, fresh, porous, sandy loam free from stones and easily worked is 
preferable. It should have thorough and rapid natural drainage. Even an 
extremely light sandy but well-drained soil is far safer than a heavier 
and more fertile one alfording poor or at best slow natural drainage, for 
in any case water can be provided artificially but imly a light well-drained 
soil will itself take care of excess precipitation. Given a choice therefore 
between the lightest possible soil provided with water and a heavy agricul- 
tural soil the former is to be preferred. This applies more particularly to 
nurseries devoted primarily to the production of coniferous species but 
even in the case of broad-leaved species, which naturally affect a more 
fertile soil and which will undoubtedly enter into reforestation in this 
region to a considerable if not a prei>onderating extent, a good sandy loam 
will suffice and will very probably be not much inferior to the best soil 
that will ultimately go to make up the state forests. The site should be 
level, or practically so, and so situated as to i»ermit of an enlargement in 
the future should occasion demand. 

An absolutely essential part of any well managed nursery is a depend- 
able water supply. Whether it be a temporary or permanent nursery it is 
poor policy to depend upon rainfall. One should 1)6 wholly independent of 
this by installing a complete irrigating system that will be adequate not 
only for the present but for all future needs. An underground system of 
pipes through which the water is delivered to hydrants, or possibly overhead 
sprinklers, is considered best in that it is permanent, does not interfere with 



T8 

operations, eliminates danger of damage to the system due to sudden 
changes of weather and brings the water to the plants at a more equable 
temperature. The pii^es need not be buried below frost line but all should 
be laid on a grade sufficient to drain them thoroughly in winter. Hydrants 
should drain underground automatically and should be provided at fre- 
quent intervals. 

The size of the nursery will depend entirely upon the quantity and 
classes of stock that are required annually. Obviously a great deal more 
space is needed for growing transplants than for an equal number of seed- 
lings and broad-leaved species as a rule demand considerably more room 
than do conifers. Ordinarily for conifers an acre of ground will take care 
of from thirty-five thousand to one hundred twenty thousand transplants, 
depending upon the length of time they are to remain in the nursery rows, 
whereas the same area devoted to the production of seedlings is sufficient 
for approximately two million two-year olds. But for a sustained annual 
output of say two million two-year seedlings twice this acreage is necessary 
since the trees occupy the ground for a period of two years. Likewise with 
transplants the space required to supply any given quantity per annum 
is dependent upon the number of years that they are to stand in the nursery 
before being sent to the field. In other words the amount of growing space 
to be provided is in almost direct ratio to the numbers and age classes 
desired annually. It is well, however, to allow for some additional ground 
so that some portion of the nursery may always be resting under beneficial 
cover crops so regulated that the entire area 'may periodically imdergo a 
complete rotation. 

As to the best cultural methods to be employed in the nursery no general 
rules can be given that will apply to all alike. So much depends upon the 
latitude, the site, the species to be raised, and like conditions. The ques- 
tion therefore becomes more or less of a local one, best met and solved 
through practice and experience in each individual case. Even with two 
nurseries where almost identical conditions obtain, the same methods may 
produce quite different results, or putting it another way, the employment 
of opposite methods may lead to entirely satisfactory results. The per- 
sonal element enters very largely into the degree of success attained. In our 
own work we have found that discontinuance of a number of practices, at 
one time generally considered as prerequisites to success, has brought about 
marked improvements. Practically all of our seeding is now done in the 
fall, whereas spring sowing was formerly the rule. We no longer make 
use of shades for shade's sake, and the stock is none the worse off for lack 
of it. Mulch in every form has been dispensed with and a considerable 
item of labor thereby avoided, to say nothing of the subsequent beneficial 
effects upon the plants: And all of these innovations combined have ap- 
parently led to the total elimination of the dread disease known as damping- 
off. Originally, as was the custom, we attempted to combat this disease 
by the application of fungicides as a preventive but with only mediocre 
results. Now we feel that we can control it entirely by the simple cul- 
tural methods mentioned above. We are also tending more and more 
towards greater intensiveness in all lines of nursery work believing it to 
be economy to do so on the assumption that, other things being equal, the 



79 

more that is put into it the more will be gotten out. As an instance of this 
all ground preparation Is now done by hand. Plowing is no longer permitted 
and a horse is not allowed in the nursery, all of the ground being carefully 
spaded. We do not, however, mean to convey the impression that this 
same mode of procedure would necessarily work out as satisfactorily in 
other regions. 

Time will not permit us to enter into the details of the various nursery 
operations, nor is that deemed appropriate here. We have therefore merely 
touched upon what appears to us to be the outstanding features to be con- 
sidered in the establishment and management of state forest nurseries. 
(Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN: I notice we have all been interested in this paper 
because we want to know more about nurseries. I feel that we are only 
in our infancy along this line. Now, to me the next subject on our program 
is the most interesting one that we have. I refer to the subject "Acquisi- 
tion of Lands for State Forests." This was the subject given to Mr. T. C. 
Williams, Deputy Commissioner of Forestry of Pennsylvania. I hope some 
good suggestions that we can use in Indiana will come out from his 
paper. (Applause) 

MR. I. C. WILLIAMS : Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in pre- 
senting this subject to you, (I shall take the liberty occasionally to refer to 
some of the experiences of my own state and have brought with me a map 
of Pennsylvania. The black patches upon it represent the present Penn- 
sylvania state forests. The scale of the map is six miles to the inch. This 
map will give you some idea of the .size of some of our tracts.) 

In any discussion involving a policy of land purchase for forest uses, 
obviously what first commands attention is some kind of land classification. 
For the present purpose it is proposed to divide all lands into two classes, 
agricultural and non-agricultural, or farm land and forest land, it being 
pretty well understood by this time that all soil not suited for growing 
farm crops is or may possibly be made suitable for growing a forest crop. 
Within the class forest land we will regard included all forms of barrens, 
moors, wastes, undrained swamps, rocky areas, as well as the better moun- 
tain and upland soil, either too steep, too high, or too poor for productive 
agriculture. • 

To determine what lands, then, are absolute forest or relative forest, 
in such states as the three represented in this conference, may not be an 
easy task. In the Appalachian region to the east or in the Rocky moun- 
tain region to the west, the problem is much simpler; but where the land 
is generally level, or slightly ridged by low hills, where extended bodies of 
woodland no longer exist, and where the farm woods are gradually melting 
away, the question is reduced to a nice balancing between the demands of 
the population on the one hand, for the products of the farm, and on 
the other, for the products of the forest. That we must have both, and 
in increasing quantities, goes without saying, else there would be no 
need for such a meeting as this. 

It would therefore seem that a logical approach to the subject would 
be by some kind of survey and report, made by a properly constituted state 
authority, now existing or to be created for the purpose, equipped with 



80 

men and means, and unhampered by any other consideration than the 
immediate business in hand. No doubt there already exists a large 
amount of data in each of the states, gathered in the past by agricultural 
geological, or topographic surveys, and easily adapted to the needs of the 
new effort. The land which is agricultural will readily separate from that 
which is forest. It is with the areas which lie between where the greatest 
doubt arises. But a final disposal of the middle class lands need not im- 
mediately be made. Set aside by purchase or other means, the land deter- 
mined to be forest. Begin a careful system of administration, protection, 
and develojiment, guided by the principles of scientific and practical for- 
estry, and within a reasonable time it will be apparent whether any state 
has too little forest land for its present and immediate future needs. Upon 
this determination it may rest the necessity of reachng out for the middle 
lands and forcing them into the class of absolute forest. 

Among all the lands which may be set aside, widely varying conditions 
will be met. There will be large areas and small areas, cleared and cul- 
tivated lands of good quality surrounded by forest, drainage conditions 
favorable or unfavorable, valuable mineral deposits which have been sold 
outright or for the removal of which leases may be outstanding. Timber 
cover may be adequate, scanty, or none, values may be low and prices high, 
and titles clouded or uncertain. 

Should it become necessary so to increase the forested area that some 
of the lands we have called middle must be brought in, this might be accom- 
plished by a system looking to the establishment of ratable areas of farm 
woods. Upon many farms now not furnished with a tract of woods, there 
will be quarter and half acres, up to ten or more acres, where pasturage 
might l)e temporarily discontinued and a woody growth started. Existing 
farm woods may be strengthened, and. in the aggregate, a large area thus 
added to the woodlands of the state. At all events without state action, 
every farm should have a piece of woodland for domestic needs; and while 
it might be difficult to persuade a farm owner to plant a highly productive 
acre with red oak or tulip poplar, yet considerations of state policy accom; 
panied by state action may make it necessary to require that it be done. 

It is more than probable that the foregoing may be found as conditions, 
modified, of cour.se, in practically all our states, and must be considered in 
every purchase. Tliey are certainly true for Pennsylvania and constantly 
occur in the experience of the writer. 

The history of the origin of our land titles shows a wide variance. The 
titles to land in the three states here met in conference are derived through 
an act of the Continental Congress, the Ordinance of 1787, preceded by 
grants to the United States of various state claims ; while those for Penn- 
sylvania are through the English grant to William Penn in 1682, the 
various treaties with the Indians and conveyances from tribal chiefs the 
will of William Penn, who died in 1718. and the Divesting Act of the Penn- 
sylvania Legislature of 1779, by which, in consideration of £130,000, 
accepted by the Penn heirs, the title of the heirs to the whole of what is 
now that state, became vested in the commonwealth. 

In proposing a form of government for his colony, Penn outlined "Cer- 
tain Conditions or Concessions" and in Article XVIII thereof he states : 



I 



81 

"That in clearing the ground care be taken to leave one acre of trees 
for every five acres cleared, especially to preserve oak and mulberries, for 
silk and shipping." It will thus be seen that the seed of practical forestry 
was sown in the virgin soil of Pennsylvania at its birth as an English 
colony; and to those of us who now live there it is a matter of lasting 
regret that the wise injunction of the founder was disregarded for two 
hundrded years. 

Knowing conditions best as we have them in Pennsylvania, I crave your 
indulgence if the methods in use there for making state forest purchases 
be used as an illustration. The state of Pennsylvania is traversed from 
northeast to southwest by the Appalachian mountains. It contains an 
area a little less than thirty million acres. Roughly we divide the state 
into three parts, of whieh the mountains and their foothills occupy about 
one-third or a little less than ten million acres, most of which is absolute 
forest land. Another part, or about ten million acres, is wholly agricultural. 
The remainder, or a little less than ten million, is of that in between class 
almost too good for forest and too poor for agriculture. The areas of 
cities, towns, lakes, and rivers are also included in this class. 

When the real forestry program started, about 1870, attention was 
directed to conditions at the heads of the larger streams. The people 
first became convinced that better stream flow meant better forest cover 
tm the upper watersheds. All this great hilly and mountainous area, pre- 
viously covered with heavy frost, was rapidly being uncovered by lumbering, 
with no attention given to regeneration or protection from fire. A Division 
of forestry was created in the newly organized Agricultural Department 
in 1895. 

The earliest acts passed by the Assembly for the purchase of lands for 
State Forests, or forestry reservation, as they were then called, were of 
the session of 1897 and were two in number. The first provided for the 
purchase of land sold for unpaid taxes and the second for the establishment 
of reservations of forty thousand acres each upon the drainage areas of 
the three largest river systems, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, and the 
Ohio. The explanation given in the Act itself, for the passage of the first 
statute, was, "the preservation of the water supply at the sources of the 
rivers of the state and for the protection of the people of the common- 
wealth and their property from destructive floods." In that day everything 
had to be explained in advance, and we have not yet wholly passed beyond 
that stage. The second statute carried the right of eminent domain, giving 
power to seize lands suitable for the establishment of the reserved areas, 
could they be obtained in no other way. It may be noted in passing that 
it has never yet been necessary to invoke the aid of this extraordinary 
means of acquisition. 

Purchase at tax sales was made to the extent of over sixty thousand 
acres. About one-half of it was sul)se(iuent!y redeemed. Lauds acquired 
by these means are usually correct forest areas, but you are never certain 
of your holdings. The right of redemi)tion, if exercised, will break up the 
continuity of tracts. I think we all agree that forestry is best pi-acticed, 
most economically administered, with large solid bodies of land. At 
present, tax sale purchases in Pennsylvania have almost ceased. Wild, 



82 

unseated, mountain land is looked upon as having greater value than 
formerly, and the owners are paying taxes promptly. Twenty years ago, 
in certain counties, the treasurer's biennial tax sale advertisement in the 
local newspapers frequently covered a page. Today, in the same coun- 
ties, it runs to less than half a column. 

Purchases on the watersheds of the principal rivers proceeded rapidly 
in the acquisition of private holdings, but before the prescribed area of 
forty thousand acres had been obtained upon each of the watersheds 
named, the Department of Forestry was created by the legislature of 
1901, and is now a constituent branch of the state government. 

The Department of Forestry consists of a Forest Commission of five 
members, of which body the Commissioner of Forestry is one. The sub- 
divisions at present are ten in number, each headed by a forester or special- 
ist. Any suitable tracts of land may be purchased in any county, the test 
being its fitness for forest culture. The price to be paid was limited at 
first to five dollars per acre, but has since been raised to ten dollars. 
Where conditions. relating to re-foresting and betterment of stand may be 
improved, timber may be sold. As a result of timber and mineral sales, 
made from what for the most part is abandoned land and decrepit timber 
left by the old-time lumbering, the department had paid into the state 
treasury $195,789.42. 

In procuring forest land for state purposes, the first consideration is 
that it be forest land. Occasionally small areas of cleared, or formerly 
cleared, land, but now chiefly abandoned for farming pur]X)ses, will be 
included. These few acres are useful for many purposes, the chief being 
that they afford living places for forest ofl3cers. All deals and negotiations 
are preferred to be had directly with the owners. The department employs 
no agents to seek out lands and does not desire to deal through agents. 
Lands have been and are now being offered in abundance. All offers must 
be made in writing. If there is seeming suitability an examination is 
directed and made. 

Because the state is in the market to buy land, some owners think 
fancy prices should be paid. They even at times try to exert political 
pressure to accomplish their end. Nothing counts with the Department of 
Forestry except actual values for forest purposes, and the value is deter- 
mined by the prior examination, having due regard to soil, water, timber 
and location. What is determined to be the real value is included in the 
form of a counter offer to the owner. If declined by him the matter is at 
an end. If accepted, there follows the formal contract of purchase and sale, 
duly acknowledged by the owner, so that if necessary the contract may 
be placed on record. 

Following the execution of the contract is the title examination. The 
Department has been singularly successful and fortunate in this part of its 
work. All title work is done by a regularly incorporated title company, 
whose expert examiners are the best in the state. Pennsylvania uses the 
old common law forms of title, and the unseated land titles are among the 
most complicated and difficult of the kind. 

The title work is closed by a report of the examiner, certifying a clear 
title, if it be so, otherwise pointing out all defects, which must be remedied 



83 

by the owner before conveyance can be accepted. Sometimes the depart- 
ment waives defects of record, should they have an expiration of limitation, 
or otherwise in no way affect marketability. Occasionally it becomes nec- 
essary to have tracts sent back to tax sale to clear title, a process requiring 
from three to five years. 

The title made right, there follows the formal conveyance by deed of 
general warranty, payment by the owner of all taxes due, payment of the 
consideration money, and recording the deed, which vests an indefeasible 
title in the commonwealth. 

When the state of Pennsylvania originally granted lands to individuals 
in severalty, it did so by "warrants", which name has now come to be 
used for the tract of land involved, as well as for the legal process. Full 
warrants are definitely of record in the general land office, by metes and 
bounds, with location definitely fixed. Since the state parted with its lauds 
by warrant areas, plus an allowance of six per cent, for roads, it now buys 
them back only in the same way. For this reason no prior survey on the 
ground is necessary to determine acreage, except in the case of partial 
warrants, where a survey and draft will be furnished by the owner, sub- 
ject to the test of the department's engineering division. 

The foregoing careful method of purchase has resulted in an almost 
total absence of title suits. The fact is that only two such suits have ever 
been brought and both were determined by the courts in favor of the 
state. In states where titles are founded upon recent government surveys, 
and where public abstract of title officers are maintained, all this is much 
simpler. 

Any program involving a policy of land purchase for state forest pur- 
poses must of necessity look to several elements of far greater future value 
than present importance. One of these is timber. Wood products are 
being called for in ever increasing quantities, outrunning the supply, with 
prices keeping pace, and the great wood storehouses thousands of miles 
away. For this reason there is an appeal to all of us to grow our own 
wood in our own back yards, as it were. Why not? We have the land, 
or can get it. It will never be cheaper, probably, than it now is, and the 
need for a beginning is immediate. 

The state of Pennsylvania has thus far bought outright 1,047,626 acres, 
for which it has paid the sum of $2,389,542.55, or an average price of about 
$2.25 an acre. At least this much more has been spent in administration, 
protection, planting, fixed charges, and general development. But the 
present value of this great estate is at least from twelve to fifteen millions 
of dollars. The policy of the state is to increase these holdings to at least 
six million acres. 

Another element of immense future value is water power from streams 
on state holdings. An increase in the density of timber cover means 
better and steadier stream flow. No kind of power is so cheap as water 
power. The increasing price of coal may very soon force a resort to this 
too long neglected source of energy. In addition to being an inexpensive 
source of permanent power, it can best be controlled or utilized in state 
ownership or under complete state control. For this reason alone large 
purchases of land by the states are justified. 



84 

A thirfl element which holds direct relationship to all the people and 
which cannot he ignored relates to health and recreation. Year hy year 
more individnals and families seek the open woods for vacation purix)ses. 
and to these mnst he added the great numbers of honest hunters and fislier- 
men who work hard fifty weeks in the year that they may enjoy two 
weeks of real life next to the ground in some great open woodland area. 
Nowhere may this recreation he had with less expenditure of money and 
energy than in state-owned land, and being the people's land they should 
have the right so to u.>^e it. All this may he done without interfering in 
any way with the use of the land for timber production or power. 

It would therefore seem to be sound economic policy for the three 
states here represented to determine at once some comprehensive plan for 
state ownership and state regulation of land for public uses, adapted to 
their respective conditions. The time to do it is now. The hisistency of 
the demand is such that delay is hut deferring the problem, more easy of 
solution now than later when the pressure will be greater and the competi- 
tion more intense. You will no doid>t find it more difficult to accomplish 
the result among the level farm lands of these states than would be the 
case on the Atlantic seaboard or in the Rockies, liut the greater the obstacles 
the greater the victory in overcoming them. It may be necessary and ex- 
pedient to apply here in the first instance a form of state regulation for 
privately owned woodlands, as is proposed in the plan of my good friend 
Colonel Graves. It may amount to an expropriation of all suitably located 
private woodland holdings, placing them, if not at once into state owner- 
ship, at least under state management and control ; and all this on the 
theory that the interest of the public is paramount. Should such conduct 
seem like an invasion of the sanctity of old-time private rights, we must 
remember that new problems demand new solutions and the precedents of 
the past may not always be found to be safe guides for the future. (Ap- 
plau.se) 

THE CHAIRMAN: As I said before, I was very interested In Mr. 
Williams' paper although I notice that conditions in Pennsylvania are (piile 
different from those in our part of the country, but I feel as though he has 
made a number of suggestions that we can use. Now thi.s is open for dis- 
cussion but the hour is very late. 

LT.-Cf)L. GRAVES: I feel that these papers and the whole subject 
should be discussed pretty freely and thoroughly at this time and I suggest 
if we do not have time for discussion now that we meet here promptly at 
two o'clock and take these subjects ui> before we proceed with the program 
of the afternoon. 

THE CHAIRMAN: If this is agreeable to y(»u, gentlenuMi, that is what 
we will do. And now I want to say just a few words in regard <o Pro- 
fessor Stanley Coulter, who will address us this afternoon. He is a mem- 
ber of our board of whom we are extremely pi-oud. He probably knows 
more about forestry than any other member of our board. He is not pres- 
ent this morning, so I feel free to say these things about him — he has 
something worth while to say to us, something of interest, and so I want 
all of you to hear him this afternoon. 

Some annoiuicements were made by Mr. Lieber. 

ADJOURNMENT. 



85 

THURSDAY AFTERNOON SESSION. 

The meeting was called to order at 2:00 ocioek. 

SENATOR r.rXinnE: We have had representatives from Illinois and 
from our own slate iiresidins at our ni(<etin}; and now I am going to call 
on one from Ohio-— Mr. Secrest, will you ijreside at our session this after- 
noon ? 

Mr. Seerest took the ehair. 

THE CHAIRMAN : We had an interesting session this mm-ning and 
aoeording to a suggestion which was made just hefore we adjourned for 
lunch, we will now give some time to discussion of the suhjects presented 
this morning. I hope you will feel free to discuss these subjects quite 
thoroughly. 

PROFESSOR COULTER: A great part of the work was about the 
proper management and care of woodland. How do you provide for the 
expenses of that? Does the department pay it? 

THE CHAIRMAN: In the case of woodlots the state has paid the 
expenses. In the case of timber estimates, the traveling expenses are paid 
by the owner. It may be questionable whether or not this is the proper 
thing to do. but it seemed the best to us. How far it will be carried out, 
I don't know. 

PROF. COULTER: What appropiiation have you? 

THE CHAIRMAN: We have about twenty-six thousand dollars a year. 
It is a lump sum which we handle as we please as far as instructional and 
investigational work is concerned. 

MR. FORBES : I would like to inquire of Mr. Lieber if I understood 
him correctly when he said the maximum price of some of the forest land 
secured was ten dollars per acre. I don't know of a^y ten dollar land in 
Illinois. 

MR. LIEBER : We have recently made an investigation and Mr. Deam 
can answer you. He has found land for ten dollars an acre and perhaps 
some less than ten dollars. 

MR. DEAM: Well, my experience in that line has been rather limited. 
We have located a few facts, however, about six hundred acres for eight 
dollars per acre and one owner sai<l he could furnish about four hundred 
acres at ten dollars jier acre. But in many parts of the state I have found 
that you cant buy aiiy land of any type for less than twenty-five or fifty 
dolla rs. 

LT.-COL. (jJRAVES: You mean that in buying land to work out a sub- 
stantial program the prices would run something like twenty-five dollars? 

MR. DEAM: Yes. There is quite a good deal of the land in the valleys 
which would run one hundred or one hundred twenty-five dollars. This 
land has good buildings on it, however. 

MR. MILLER: 1 think we have land for thirty-five dollars or fifty 
dollars. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES: Does that have any timber on ItV 

MR. MILLER : Yes, a little. 



86 

MR. SHEPARDSON: There is one kind of land in Illinois which is 
land which has been on top of coal, where the values from beneath the 
soil have been extracted and the ground at present lies idle and looks pretty- 
desolated. I have wondered if these tracts would not make good forest 
reservations. 

LT.-CAL. GRAVES : Mr. Lieber, you said in your paper this morning 
that you thought that the forest problems of these three states would have 
to be worked out largely by pul)lic ownership. Do you think at the present 
prices and with the present condition of the state's finances it would be 
possible to get enough land to carry out that idea of ours? 

MR. LIEBER : That opens a very large subject. It is a matter of 
figures. If the land goes higher than fifteen dollars or perhaps twenty 
dollars, it is not practical to do it on that basis. It is a question whether 
it is possible to buy it outright and make it profitable or whether some 
other financial arrangement will have to be made. 

LT.-COL. GRAVES : It seems to me that if it is a feasable thing to 
acquire lands on a considerable scale that it would be a desirable thing 
for all of these three states definitely to work for a policy of public 
ownership. I think we should be in a position at this conference to reach 
a conclusion on a few of the larger points. Colonel Lieber suggested a 
method of organization between the three states which would form a 
splendid basis for working out a program. I should like to go on record 
as being in favor of a policy by these states for the purchase of lands to 
establish state forests as extensive as conditions will permit. In the work- 
ing out of the Weeks law of piirchases by the government, we found 
that a good many of the objections were much more easily overcome than 
had been anticipated. Of course we had a very large coimtry to draw 
upon which enabled us to secure lands at very reasonable prices. Person- 
ally, I believe that in the long run if you can embark a policy of that kind, 
if you don't try to push it too fast, that you will be able in the long run 
to obtain lands at prices which would be well worth while for the public — • 
in the form of receipts or in general public benefits which can be very 
clearly shown. I believe that you can work it out. 

We have found that every tract that we buy is a center of co-operation 
and interest in the surroiuiding country. 

THE CHAIRMAN : From the statements made here regarding Indiana 
and Illinois, Ohio appears to be radically different. When we first pur- 
chased tracts of land, we had land we could get from three to five dollars 
an acre and some from eight to ten dollars an acre. I don't think that the 
price of lands is going to be any obstacle at all in the way of acquiring state 
forests in Ohio. 

MR. WILLIAMS : Someone spoke of land from which coal had been 
removed. Why not purchase only the surface rights? In Pennsylvania 
we have endeavored to purchase the whole title and up to the present time 
have done so. 

I think I will also revert to the question of Senator Guthrie raised in 
regard to the amount of money we are using in Pennsylvania to carry on 
9ur forestry work. The fact is that at the session of the legislature in 1915 



87 

they gave us $619,700 for two years" work. lu 1917, $813,000. The ques- 
tion was asked as to where the money comes from. We do not grow it on 
trees. A certain sum of money is set aside for us, — definite sums for defi- 
nite things. I have a statement of the appropriations for 1919 : 

Department Administrative Expenses $ 353,200 

Surveys 6,000 

Labor 190,000 

Purchase of Lands 130,000 

Materials, Equipment, etc 85,000 

Bureau of Forest Protection 90,000 

Forest Academy 30,000 

District Foresters 15,000 

School Charges 43,000 

Road Charges 43,000 

County Charges 21,500 



$1,006,700 



LT.-COL. GRAVES : The papers this morning and some of the papers 
yesterday afternoon made mention of co-operation with the Federal 
Government. I am referring to the interests of these three states. Just 
what that co-operation should be was not specified. Co-operatiug with the 
Federal Government in meeting this problem will mean that there is a 
responsibility on the part of these states in connection with the federal 
acivities and in the establishment of instructive measures. One of the 
things which can be done, which we are trying to do, is the purchase 
of lands by the Federal Government. We have laid out a program in the 
southern Appalachians of about a million acres. We believe that this 
program is much too small for the public needs in the long run. We have 
talked a good deal about general co-operation with the Federal Government. 
The Federal Government is to be able to co-operate with these states as 
well as other states. It is but a question of expressing your interest and 
demand co-operation and you will get it. If the public don't want this, it 
won't be forthcoming. 

THE CHAIRMAN: If there are any other questions, now is the time 
to ask themr 

MR. LIEBER : May I suggest we begin our regular program because we 
will have a number of questions to come up after our papers have been 
delivered this afternoon. 

THE CHAIRMAN : We will proceed with our afternoon program. We 
have with us a gentleman who has been connected with the State Board 
of Forestry ever since the work was organized in Indiana. It gives me 
pleasure to introduce Prof. Stanley Coulter. His subject is "Forestry Edu- 
cational Policies." 

PROF. STANLEY COULTER: I do not purpose making a formal 
address upon this subject, since I feel it more important to develop a discus- 
sion than to present a paper. 



88 

In discussing the topic we should remember that four groups are to be 
reached and that the method of attack differs with the group. These 
groups are tlie children easily readied through the schools ; the woodland 
owner, the great indifferent and inert public and last of all and perhaps 
most difticult of all, the law makers or legislators. 

I may premise by saying that there is a very great difference between 
propjigaiida and education. Propaganda has been over-done and certainly 
has far outrun knowledge. AVe have in the office of the state Forester rec- 
ords upon some hundreds of tree plantings in the state. These plantings 
cover thousands of acres and, originally at least, contained hundreds of 
thousands of trees. It is, however, a conservative statement to say that 
85% of these plantings are failures, that is, that the sale of all of the 
product at the highest market price would not produce an amount equal 
to the outlay. 

In this conference, much has been said about stimulating interest in 
forestal problems. I think that at one time there may have been a need 
for such stimulus, but I feel that time has passed and that the present 
need is for education. The plantings to which I have just referred show 
clearly a quick reaction to the stimulus ; the failures show that zeal had 
far outrun knowledge and indicate that the next step is the development 
of some educational policies. 

Much of the educational work so-called, has been done in the public 
schools with children. In every instance the purpose has been laudable, 
but in most cases the methods have been inadequate and the results un- 
satisfactory. Arbor day ceremonies served to arouse spasmodic enthusiasm, 
but with all of the Arbor Day plantings the school yards are nearly as 
destitute of trees as at the first observance of the day. 

Nature study promised much when first introduced into the schools, but 
it soon became manifestly purposeless and altogether sentimental in so 
many cases that it is to be regarded as of dcmbtful educational value. Its 
chief fault seems to lie in the fact that us administered at present, it seems 
to have no objective and serves in the main as a means of relieving the 
monotony of the ordinary school duties. At the same time I believe that no 
more valuable educational weapon lies within our grasp, if we can train 
ourselves in its right use. 

I think that in any sound Forestal Educational policy we should see 
that our foundations are sufficiently broad. Forestry is after all but one 
of the phases of the far greater j)roblem of the conservation of our natural 
resources. The mistake has been made in almost every instance, in consid- 
ering it as a thing apart, leaving cnit of account its relations to a great 
problem which in some of its phases interests every one. Much of the 
weakness of the present Forestal Educational policies is to be attributed to 
the fact that it has been presented from too narrow a viewpoint. 

The form and content of the subject should, it seems to me, be worked 
out in the main by the i>eople who teach, after consultation with the people 
who know. Most of the books in use have been written either by people 
who can teach but <lo not know the subject, or by peojde who know the 
subject but cannot teach. The teaching of forestry should begin in the 
schools in order that the next generation may have a proiier appreciation 



89 

of the manifold values of this great natural resource. If this is done we 
must have a different tyi>e of text-book in Forestry for the graded schools. 
Probably the main appeal of such texts should be the economic. Sad as it 
may seem, this is apparently the most successful of all lines of attack. 
Whether you desire to have a bill passed by the legislature, or to stir a 
great mass of people to action you practically insure success by vi^orking 
along economic lines. It is almost certain that if educational work in 
Forestry results in continued interest and ultimately develops a new 
mental altitude regarding the preservation and development of our timbered 
areas, it must have underlying it this economic relation. The type of 
work that should be done lies fairly clear in my mind. There are many 
men in this country who could give us such texts, but the immediate need 
is to realize the importance of centralizing such an educational movement 
if we hope for a new view-point as to our natural resources on the part 
of the next generation. 

Educational policies as they relate to the land owner are of quite differ- 
ent sort. He should be taught in some way or other to classify his land, 
separating at least roughly between that suitable for annual crops and that 
suited primarily for forestral purposes. He should be encouraged to plant 
trees in such areas on his farm and should be advised as to what particular 
forms he should use in his particular case. We have not watched over the 
land owner's interests as we should. We have awakened his interest 
in tree planting and then left him at the mercy of any tree salesman who 
might visit him. We have left him in utter ignorance of the ecologic condi- 
tions necessary for the successful growth of the different species of eco- 
nomic trees. 

Again there should be, and this in plain untechnical language, instruc- 
tion in estimating the value of his timber crop. He does not know how 
many thousands of board feet his woodland is carrying to the acre, neither 
has he any method of estimating it ; he does not know the differing values 
of the various si3ecies nor the modifications in their values due to size, to 
defects, or distance from the mill. In marketing his crop he must rely 
wholly upon the honesty of the purchaser. This condition does not obtain 
as regards any other land product and until it is remedied but little pro- 
gress can be hoped for in woodland forestry. Of course, bulletins have 
been issued by the National Forest Service and by the states, of high 
value to those who can carefully study them, but I can see a small hand- 
book of from thirty to fifty pages which would do more in the effective 
education of the woodland owner than a library of the finely scientific 
bulletins which have so greatly aided the student but have not as yet met 
the real needs of the landowner in any practical way. Evidently the edu- 
cation of the landowner is one of the most important features in any sane 
forestal educational policy. The maintenance of existing areas in any- 
thing approaching a normal stand, the utilization of waste areas for timber 
production, the increase of values by improving the quality of the timber 
whether by silvi-cultural methods or changing the proportion of the 
species in the stand, all depend on such education. We have failed to give 
him any adequate information in a straightforward, understandable way 
as to the length of his investment or the time which must elapse before 



90 

he can harvest his timber crop. Each one in this audience has been asked 
scores of times this question : "If I plant trees how long will it be before 
they are post size, or large enough to market?" The average man is not 
greatly attracted by a long time investment, and unless we can educate 
him to believe that such an investment is desirable because of its safety and 
the certainty of its ultimate returns, we will see our woodlands not only 
diminish in area but also in quality. 

Incidentally the landowner should be made to understand that high 
grade land suitable for annual crops should not be used for forestal pur- 
poses. Only the other day a man asked me to advise him as to what trees 
to plant on some ten or twelve acres of land he proposed to devote to that 
purpose. When asked the value of the land he gave it as one hundred and 
fifty dollars an acre. Of course the answer was easy — plant no trees on 
such land, raise annual crops. I could take you to catalpa plantings in 
this state on land worth over two hundred dollars an acre. 

Another matter should be emphasized in the education of the landowner 
and that is the impossibility of having a woodland and a woods pasture on 
the same area. A perennial question is : "Under what kind of trees will 
bluegrass grow?" It is perhaps too much to hope that the present gener- 
ation of landowners will get away from the conviction that "woodland" 
and "woods pasture" are not synonymous terms, but any forestal educational 
policy should provide against this fatal fallacy being carried on into the 
next generation. The other day I asked one of my assistants to go through 
all of the bulletins that have come to me from the Forest Service and look 
for those giving directions as to procedure in the establishment or improve- 
ment of woodlands. He looked over some five hundred bulletins and 
reported there were none bearing upon that subject. This of course does 
not prove that there are not such bulletins but it does indicate that they 
are not as numerous as the importance of the subject demands. In this 
field again the forestal educational policy should be centralized, at 
least to the extent of unifying the principles laid down in such cases. In 
any event a nation-wide campaign emphasizing certain basic practices in 
successful woodland management would be far more effective than the 
present haphazard method, under which bulletins issue as they "happen" 
rather than in accordance with a definite and clearly wrought out policy. 
In a word, in the past in this phase of forestal endeavor there has been 
too much propaganda and not enough education. 

The great mass of people and more especially, those in urban com- 
munities are not especially interested in forestry. Points of contact are 
relatively remote and yet before any very great advance can be made 
these uninterested people must be interested and made apostles of a new 
order. One of the best methods of awakening interest is through an 
appeal to local pride. In Indiana, the purchase of Turkey Run park and 
Spencer park, the acquiring of the State Forest Reserve, the agitation for 
a great park area in the dune region, and the development of municipal 
parks has done more to further interest in forestry than all other agencies 
combined. From these lesser areas with restricted use to the larger areas 
with limitless possibilities is an easy and natural step. When in addition 
to this the people are educated to a realization that these parked and for- 



91 

ested areas are for them, for their pleasure and benefit, the problem of the 
education of the people is solved. 

Of course, this interest must be kept alive by a proper and almost 
constant publicity, made as attractive by illustrations and other devices 
as is possible. Foresters are scientists and in common with other scien- 
tists are much to blame for the present general and almost appalling lack 
of interest in their problems. Their method of attack has been wrong, and 
the emphasis has very often been wrongly placed. To meet this need, to 
awaken this interest, educational tools must differ materially from those 
in the former groups. Here also the need of a centralizing agency is evi- 
dent if the highest efficiency is to be secured. Our war time efforts in 
financial lines have amply proven the eflSciency of concerted action in the 
securing apparently impossible goals in an almost incredibly short time. 
A sound educational policy will quickly utilize this dynamic fact in mass 
psychology. 

But after all we must acknowldege the fact that no very great advances 
over existing forestal conditions are possible unless in some way we can 
educate our legislators. The men who constitute our legislatures in the 
main, have pledged themselves to give the people a "business administra- 
tion," Ordinarily that means they will vote against every bill carrying 
an appropriation if it is at all possible to find the slightest justification 
for so doing, and where they are compelled by circumstance to vote affirm- 
tively will "trim it to the bone." Now forestal advance means money 
and it means money from the state. Money for acquiring lands, money 
for the purchase of parks, money for the forester with his office and 
field force. This of course, means that legislators should be educated in 
such a way that they can see the economy of forestry. As a rule, these 
men serve only a term or at most three or four. Our educational work 
must therefore be intensive. Further it must focus upon one point, the 
economics of conservation and therefore of forestry. It might even 
overemphasize the point by demonstrating that the failure to pass adequate 
forestal appropriations was irrefutable evidence of unwillingness to give 
the people a "business administration." Such work would necessarily be 
done through compact and attractive folders or bulletins, which would, 
however, have to be prepared with infinite care and skill. It would 
be easy to name a dozen men in this country any one of whom could 
prepare a series of such folders or bulletins as would show to the average 
legislature the economy of conservation in a compelling way. This work 
has, in the past, been either neglected or so hastily done as to partially 
defeat its own purpose. Here again there is need of a centralizing or 
co-ordinating body, in order that a forceful presentation of the arguments 
in favor of conservation measures may be made in every state in which 
legislative action is sought. I have omitted purposely any suggestion as 
to the work in the Forest Schools of the country. This work as we all 
know is not only well organized but is in most cases being administered 
with rare skill. These schools can be trusted to keep pace with all 
forestal advances. Neither have I spoken of the training of the forester 
himself, although personally I believe the effective forester will be found 
to be made up of about one-tenth technical skill and nine-tenths common 



92 

sense. I have only sought to bring to your attention points in which I 
felt forestal educational methods were deficient and to suggest possible 
remedies. From my point of view the vital educational work at the 
present time is as follows : First, with the children or the outlook for the 
future ; second, the education of the landowner along extremely definite 
and practical lines ; third, the education of the general public to the end 
of securing a far wider spread interest, and fourth, the education of the 
legislator in order that he might have a firmer and more intelligent grasp 
uix>n tlie economies of conservation. I believe some such plan should be 
worked out in the immediate future, and that the organization of a com- 
mittee to formulate forestal educational policies should be considered by 
the Poorest Service. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN : We are very glad to have with us this afternoon 
Mr. P. S. Ridsdale, Editor American Forestry. His subject is "Forest 
Publicity." (Applause) 

MR. P. S. RIDSDALE : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, you have Colonel 
Graves' remarks about the necessity of public participation in securing 
a national forest policy, you have heard Mr. i,ieber speak of educating 
the public, you have heard Mr. Coulter speak of the uneducated public 
and now I am going to tell you how to help educate them and how to 
get tlieir co-operation. All of you know without being told of the value 
of publicity. You all know that it was publicity that helped to put across 
the big Liberty Loan drives and Red Cross drives and War Chest drives 
and every other kind of a drive during the great war. 

I just noticed a clipping in a paper the other day which said public 
matters printed in newspapers in Indiana alone, received the attention of 
five or six million people. I want you to realize tliat the newspaijers are 
perhaps the greatest aid to publicity that can be found. The newspapers 
have treated the various phases of the forest situation v^^hich have been 
fed to them by the Agricultui-al Department in an editorial way as well 
as a news item. I can go on quoting for hours from newspapers which 
we receive day after day and in them you will find the trend of public 
opinion. We have had editorials on shade tree planting and all kinds 
of editorials on all kinds of forestry subjects. I can tell you any number 
of stories that we have featured that have helped to awaken the interest 
of the public but I do not want to take up your time. 

My message is that the newspaper men are standing ready to co-operate 
with you in putting across any program which you may have. We are 
ready to give you more space than we have given and are ready to push 
your whole program for a forest policy. (Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN : Our next subject relates to wood-using industries. 
It is "The Timber Supply in Relation to the Retail Trade." Mr. PMndlay 
M. Torrence, secretary of the Ohio Retail Lumber Dealers' association is 
our first speaker on this subject. (Applause) 

MR. FINDLAY M. TORRENCE : Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, if you 
will bear with me, I am going to change my subject to read "The Retail 
Trade in Relation to the Timber Supply". 

The lay public naturally looks to the local lumber dealers as an author- 
ity on trees, 



93 

When the ladies Friday Afternoon Society or the Nature Study Cluh 
asks him to read a paiier about the trees, he usually feels complimented 
and manages to crib a few statistics and make good. But he does not 
take the job very seriously. I believe that he should take the job seriously 
and to that end I have a few suggestions to make. 

One of the curious phases of the retail lumber industry today is the 
air of complacent detachment and indiffei-ence of the average retailer of 
lumber toward all problems of timber conservation. To him a sixty 
year supply of timber seems like an eternal supply. 

The attitude of the retailer is too often a feeling that "sufficient unto 
the day is the profit thereof". He is too prone to regard as visionary and 
academic those discussions and those movements which have to do with 
the future stability and permanence of his business ; the welfare of his 
industry a scoi'e or more years hence. 

I was reminded of this attitude very forcibly when I endeavored to make 
some inquiries among the Ohio Association of Retail Lumber Dealers rel- 
ative to the local timber supply in relation to the retail lumber trade. 

I discovered that less than 2% of the members of that association have 
any saw-mill connections or any financial interest in local sources of timber 
supply, and it is manifest from the discussion of the conservation question 
in our district meetings that a still smaller percentage of them feel any 
personal concern in the preservation of our forest resources. 

The retailer of lumber is not to be censored too severely for this 
attitude. The problems of his business are so manifold; the competition 
he encounters so keen and the general technique of his profession is so 
exacting, that the average lumberman must keep his nose to the grindstone 
and his eyes glued to the opportunity immediately ahead, rather than to 
problems which he feels will concern a succeeding generation. At le^st he 
must do so when acting in his individual capacity. 

And yet I believe there is a possibility of making the retail distributor 
of lumber an effective agency for constructive conservation work. 

If this is done, however, the appeal will have to be made to the retailers 
collectively, rather than to the retailer as an individual. The retail dealers 
will have to be interested in the work through an appeal for such service 
from their local and district state commercial associations. 

The aggregate membership of the lumber organizations in the three 
states participating in this conference, is more than 1500. Each state 
association is now thoroughly and efficiently organized, with local zone 
or district groups, comprising the dealers in every city, county, or several 
adjacent counties. It is these groups of lumbermen which I feel could b« 
converted into effective agencies through which the state departments of 
conservation could be assisted in functioning. 

In the first place, if I may digress slightly, I do not see why the lumber 
manufacturers' associations, such as the Southern Cypress, Southern Pine, 
West Coast Association, etc.. should not be encouraged or required to 
assume responsibility for reforestation projects as associations. What 
may prove to be a very burden.some and poorly performed duty, if required 
of the timber manufacturers, as individual competitive concerns, might 
be eagerly and efficiently performed as an association enterprise. Espe- 



94 

cially would this be the case if the lumber manufacturers were permitted 
to assess the cost of the undertaking against the consumer of lumber, where 
it should properly be distributed. Thus the consumer of lumber as such 
would be called upon to provide a sinking fund for the amortization of his 
debt to future generations for his use of timber resources which belong 
to succeeding generations just as truly as to the present. 

I do not feel that a plan of reforestation which the lumber manufac- 
turers would regard as compulsory and unfair will ever be a success. Such 
organized opposition as they are in a position to give coercive reforestation 
programs, would result merely in lavish expenditures for court procediu-e. 
And in the national forestry project becoming a political issue, we can 
readily see how imjwssible, how absolutely disastrous it would be to have 
the problem bandied about between contending political parties with one 
party carefully nullifying all that their predecessors in office had accomp- 
lished. 

But I do not feel that the lumber manufactures would regard as coercive 
the requirements that they turn over to their association a certain number 
of pennies for every thousand feet of lumber they sell to be used in re- 
forestation. 

Such an arrangement would give the associations a certain property 
nucleus which would do a great deal to insure their permanent func- 
tioning. Such a plan would also call forth the competitive impulse as 
between the associations representing the different species. 

And such a plan would avoid the tendency toward state socialism which 
lies in the direction of the entire forest resources of the future, being the 
creation and property of the government rather than the creation of private 
enterprise. 

It may be objected that these organizations are only indirectly or 
vagu^y of a public character, and that they might not therefore be respon- 
sible custodians of such a trust, but is it not true that we have neglected 
too much in the past the opportunity of utilizing organizations of a quasi- 
public character in the administration of public and patrotfc work? 

Tlie war taught us what these organizations might accomplish in the 
tasks incident to community or national welfare. 

It is true that the commercial organizations to which I refer are created 
for a selfish commercial purpose, but I am sure that they would welcome 
the opportunity to broaden the scope of their activities and undertake a 
work such as I gather it is the purpose of this conference to launch. 

During the war some statesman asserted that no institution would sur- 
vive long after the world war, which could not demonstrate that it con- 
tributed or ministered in some essential degree to human welfare. 

Applying that standard, I am somewhat inclined to question whether or 
not a commercial organization which has no reason for existence other 
than the selfish aggrandizement of its members is justifiable. 

The day is here when the serious and thoughtful organization executive 
recognizes that his organization must be made an implement for the 
advancement of civic and patriotic interests ; for the promotion of public 
and commimity welfare, as well as for the advancement of the interests of 
the organization members. 



95 

I do not believe that any quasi-public organization, be it commercial, 
social or labor organization, will be long tolerated— or should be tolerated 
—which can not demonstrate that the public welfare as well as the 
interest of its members, is advanced through its activities. 

The organization executive of serious purpose realizes that he directs 
a vehicle of powerful influence for good or evil. He is confronted on all 
sides today with evidences of the misuse of that power by thoughtless and 
irresponsible organization leaders. 

The menace of the destructive possiblities of purely selfish or misguided 
organizations has awakened the conservative organization leader to a new 
sense of his responsibility in the social and economic fabric. 

You will find these organizations eager to devote time and money 
and effort to such public spirited activities as your State Departments are 
now fostering. You will find the Lumber Dealers' Organization eager to be 
of service in forest conservation projects. 

Of course, the details of their participation will have to be carefully 
worked out, but it would seem to me that they might serve effectively in 
conducting a survey of timber areas in each of the local communities and 
that they could report also areas that could be more profitably devoted to 
timber crops than to agriculture. 

Second, they could conduct educational campaigns against uneconomic 
and destructive methods of utilizing wood lot products. 

Year after year the retail lumberman has sat placidly by and watched 
his farmer patrons sacrifice potential fortunes in young hardwood timber, 
in the belief that tamarack, cedar, locust or cement fence posts were too 
high priced. 

The Retail Lumber Organization should combat these practices by educa- 
tional campaigns in reference to commercial value — the present and the 
prospective value, of various species and growths of timber. 

I see no reason why the Lumber Organizations should not go further 
than this, and even become owners of timber conservation tracts in their 
respective commxmities. 

Commercial and social organizations responded loyally to the "Buy-a- 
Bale-of-Cotton" campaign some years ago. Why should they not respond 
just as readily to the "Own-a-Tract-of-Timber" campaign. 

I feel sure that the local lumber dealers' clubs and district organizations 
at least could be interested in such a campaign. Such co-operative owner- 
ship and enterprise would give them, for one thing, a property nucleus, 
which would go far toward insuring a live, permanent interest in the organ- 
ization. 

Areas that should be in timber to prevent erosion can generally be 
bought very cheaply. When such tracts are disclosed in the association 
survey to which I have alluded, they should be bought up, if necessary, 
by the organizations of lumbermen. 

There is an instance in point at the present time in my own county in 
Ohio. A large and well-timbered farm, known as the John Bryan farm, has 
been bequeathed to the state for a game and forest reservation. But a 
provision was stipulated by the eccentric donor that there should never 
be any religious services conducted on the premises. 



96 

It is improbable that the state officials ever would haA'^e repaired to the 
Bryan farm to pray, if the donor had not mentioned this stipulation, but 
as it is, there has been a good deal of opposition expressed by religious 
organizations against the state accepting the farm under this condition. 

Now, in a case of that kind, if the opposition should definitely block 
acceptance of the gift, steps should be taken to have some semi-public 
organization or organizations ready to step in and keep the timber pre- 
serve from being lost to posterity, as it assuredly will be if it is sold for 
private exploitation. 

It has seemed to me that for the greater part of this territory the prob- 
lem of timber conservation is chiefly one of intelligent mainteuLJce of the 
farmers' wood lot. 

Most of the young growth on these wood lots is sacrificed for fence 
posts and similar uses on the farm. The lot is then closely pastured so 
that the seedlings have no chance. The wood lot soon becomes a grove 
of matured trees, and it is ultimately skinned off entirely. This practice 
can be combated by the right kind of educational propaganda, and organ- 
izations such as the one I represent should be encouraged to make it their 
duty to spread the propaganda. The State Bureaus can accomplish much, 
I am sure, by encouraging the State. Di.^trict and Local Lumber association 
to assume repsonsibility as custodians for timber areas, trustees for the 
permanent protection of sylviciilture in their resiiective communities. 
(Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN: We will next hear from Mr. Harry Soearce, who is 
a member of the Indiana Retail Lumber Dealers" Association. (Applause) 
MR. HARRY SCEARCE : In a study of the lumber industry covering 
the distribution of softwood lumber in the middle west, made by the Forest 
Service, it was learned that over ninety-five per cent, of the lumber sold 
in this territory is distributed through the retail yards. 

In 1914 eleven of the central states had eleven hundred yards, eighty- 
one per cent, being in towns of two thousand five hundred and less, and sold 
over seven billion feet of lumber, this being an average per capita consump- 
tion of approximately three hundred feet. 

To illustrate what this means : Indianapolis has a population of three 
hundred thousand in round numbers, applying the average annual consump- 
tion of three hundred feet, means that it requires ninety million feet of 
lumber, or thirty-six hundred carloads of twenty-five thousand feet, to 
supply the demand in this city from the retail yards. 

To move all of this at one time, would require thirty-six thousand three 
ton trucks, hauling twenty-five hundred feet each and forming a proces- 
sion in close formation two hundred miles in length. Applying this to the 
entire country, in which it is estimated there are forty-two thousand retail 
lumber yards and you have some idea of the importance in the industry of 
the retail branch. 

The investigation of the lumber industry by the Forest Service, at the 
request of the Federal Trade Commission, has cleared away many erron- 
eous impressions held by the public, especially in reference to the retail 
part of it. 



97 

The economic necessity of the retail lumber yard was established beyond 
question, for it was found that of the more than twenty-seven billion feet 
sold in the entire country at retail, the average sale was considerably less 
than $100.00. 

Quoting from Forest Report No. 116, "Considering the location of the 
bulk of the saw mills with respect to the one hundred million lumber con- 
sumers throughout the United States, together with the service demanded 
by the average user, it comes apparent that some type of local retail yard 
which assembles stocks of lumber from several producing regions in car- 
load lots and provides time and place utility for the customer is essential 
to the practicable distribution of the bulk of the lumber required in rela- 
tively small and diversified amounts. 

"The retail dealer who makes a technical study of the relative merits 
of different structural materials for diffei-ent uses may occupy the position 
of an unbiased adviser who is capable of rendering a valuable economic 
service to this community." 

The retail lumber dealer, then, who comes so directly in touch with the 
user is most deeply interested in the source of supply of timber, how long 
it will last and what is being done to conserve and replenish it. The United 
States has had during the past forty years, three great principal sources 
of supply, The Lake States, The Southern States and the Pacific Northwest. 

According to a recognized authority, the present supply of all merchant- 
able timber is two thousand six hundred thirty-seven billion feet, as of 
January, 191G. of which one thousand four hundred eighty-two billion feet, 
or fifty-six and two-tenths per cent, is in the Pacific northwest, Oregon, 
California, Idaho and Montana ; five hundred forty-five billion feet, or 
twenty and ".even-tenths per cent, in the southern states ; ninety billion feet, 
or thirty-four per cent, in the lake states, and the remaining five hundred 
thirty billion, or nineteen and seven-tenths per cent, in the remaining forest 
regions, including the central hardwood belt. 

The record of production covering the thirty-five years from 1880 to 
1915, discloses that the lake states produced in 1880 thirty-five and one-tenth 
per cent, of the lumber from the three great districts, but in 1915 only nine 
and three-tenths per cent, was produced in that territory. The southern 
states were producing fifteen and nine-tenths per cent, in 1880 and rose to 
forty-eight and nine-tenths per cent, in 1915, while the Pacific northwest 
furnished but three and eight-tenths per cent, in 1880, while in 1915 it was 
cutting twenty-one and four-tenths per cent, of the total. 

My own experience in the lumber business goes back to the early part 
of the nineties, just about the time southern yellow pine was getting into 
the markets north of the Ohio river, and beginning to displace white pine 
and hemlock in southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. 

Prior to that time the chief source of supply of the states represented in 
this conference had been Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Saw mills 
located along the Mississippi river and supplied with logs brought down 
in rafts from the woods above, distributed their products through Illinois 
and westward, while large distributing yards located at the lake cities 
received barges of lumber from the mills in the north and shipped it out 
over Indiana, Ohio and the east. 



98 

Michigan City was the principal point of distribution through a large 
portion of Indiana, and it was no uncommon practice for large retail deal- 
ers in Indianapolis and other cities to purchase an entire barge-load of 
lumber and bring it to their mills where it was worked into flooring, siding, 
finish, etc., and sold to the dealers in the smaller towns. At that time the 
demand was confined to three or four different kinds of wood, the base of 
supply was near, and the investment of the average retailer consequently 
was small. 

I recall when hemlock dimension lumber was shipped into this market 
from Michigan City and sold at retail for $11.00 per thousand. The freight, 
as I recall it, was about $1.25 per thousand feet. However, as the timber 
in these states that were located near the water was cut out, and it was 
necessary to build railroads far into the woods, prices began to rise and 
southern yellow pine, which at that time could be found in great quantities 
along almost every mile of railway through the timber states of the south, 
found a market in the north. 

The freight rates were low, being an average of about $4.50 per thousand 
feet. Stumpage accessible to railroads could be bought for $1.00 to $2.00 
per acre, and as a result, prices of yellow pine lumber were low. Recently 
when looking over the invoice of the first car of lumber bought by my com- 
pany, when we began business in 1892, which by the way was yellow pine, 
I find we paid, delivered, $16.75 per thousand for four inch Star flooring, 
that grade being practically clear, $14.00 for ten inch, number two boards 
and $14.75 for six inch number one common drop siding. These prices do 
not represent the present cost of freight from the northwest. 

Now when the easily accessible timber in the south has been cut and 
logging operations have become very expensive, prices have sharply ad- 
vanced. Freight rates have gone higher as the average haul has become 
longer, the rate from the south being now practically double that of twenty- 
five years ago. 

Statistics of the supply and cut of timber show that the source of 
supply is again shifting and the northwest is now the only 'great reser- 
voir of supply left, but on account of the great distance and expensive 
methods of logging made necessary by the broken country and great size 
of the timber, we can not expect the low prices that have prevailed in the 
past at the opening of a new timber supply. 

At the present rate of cutting, figures given being as of 1916, the supply 
of all available merchantable timber in the United States, making no 
allowance for new growth and based on present utilization and consump- 
tion, is shown as follows : 

Pacific Northwest 166 years 

Southern States 30 years 

Lake States 21 years 

All Others 70 years 

or an equivalent of over seventy years. This discloses the rapid approach 
of the end of the supply in the lake and southern states, and means that 
soon the entire central west and east must depend upon obtaining all their 
supply of timber from the northwest, at a freight cost, based on present 



99 

rates, of from $16.00 to $20.00 per thousand feet, unless some practical plan 
of reforestation is speedily adopted. In some sections of the south, pine 
has grown up since the Civil War and is now being cut and marketed 
in the form of small dimension and common boards and when put to uses 
for which it is suitable is practically as good as virgin timber. 

This fact merely indicates the possibility of growing timber in a com- 
mercial way in certain localities. I am not prepared to discuss policies 
or plans of reforestation, as I possess no technical knowledge on the subject, 
but from the standpoint of a retailer, knowing the far-reaching effect upon 
prices when almost the entire supply of timber is confined to one section of 
the coimtry and the consequent decline in the use of lumber as a structural 
material, I feel that I may safely represent the retailers of Indiana as 
favoring- national and state legislation that would have for its purpose 
the reforesting of a vast acreage of land that is not suitable for highly 
developed agriculture, but is adapted to the successful growing of trees. 
Given proper tax exemption, timber landowners could be encouraged to 
reforest the land from which the trees have been cut. Waste in logging 
operations should be avoided so far as possible, but perhaps the only prac- 
tical solution of this is for a market to be created for that which is now 
not worth bringing into the mill and manufacturing. 

This is a feature of conservation that is largely up to the retailer. In 
the past it has been the practice of the public to demand certain standard 
lengths of lumber, regardless, in many cases, of the purpose for which it 
was intended. 

If, for instance, four-foot lengths were needed, the order almost invar- 
iably would be for twelve or sixteen-foot lengths. Until recent scarcity of 
stock at the mills, resulting from war conditions, short lengths were not 
easily marketable at prices that would make it profitable for the mill to 
utilize the full cut of the log, and waste resulted. 

That there is a use for lumber two feet and longer is obvious to anyone 
who has given careful thought to the uses to which it is or may be put, 
and with the proper effort on the part of the dealer, the user can be induced 
to buy eight two-foot pieces instead of one sixteen, if the former is the 
length needed. 

In other words, if the retailer of lumber is to best serve the public, 
he iftist seek to bring his merchandising methods to the highest point of 
efliciency. His place of business must take on more the aspect of a lumber 
store, rather than merely a yard, which is conceived by the public to be 
a piece of ground covered by a miscellaneous lot of more or less orderly 
piles of lumber, to be first sent to a mill to be worked or put in shape by a 
skilled carpenter before it is ready for use. This is true of a considerable 
part of the lumber that goes into general construction, but there is a 
demand for small ready-to-use pieces, the supply of which, to the public, 
would result in a closer utilization of the tree in the woods and at the mill. 

The retail lumber associations have done a great deal to bring about 
better methods in the distribution of lumber. The programs have been 
almost entirely given over to the discussion of economies, efficiency of ser- 
vice and better accounting. The problems of conservation and reforestation 
are now recognized as vital to the industry and from now on will receive 
the most careful thought and the heartiest support of the membership. 



loo 

it is not my purpose, in tliis brief paper, to offer a solution of the 
problems that are before this conference, but rather to give in a small way 
a practical view of the retail lumber conditions as have existed in the 
past, and as now exist, hoping to throw some light on the situation, and 
to show that by reason of the close touch the retailers of softwood lumber 
have with the buying public, they are in an excellent position to assist to 
a considerable degree in the educational work necessary to the successful 
realization of any plan that may be worked out by this conference. 
(Applause) 

THE CHAIRMAN: That ends our program for this afternoon, I will 
call for a report of the resolutions committee. 

Mr. Richard Lieber, Chairman, Resolutions Committee : "I will first 
present a number of resolutions sent in by county fish and game and forest 
associations of Indiana relative to forest conditions." 

It was moved and seconded that the reading of the report of these 
resolutions be dispensed with, but that the re.solutions be made a part 
of the record. Motion carried. 

Mr. Lieber then read the report of the resolutions committee which was 
seconded and carried. 

Resolutions sent in by the following County Organizations : 

Howard County Fish, Game & Bird Protective Association, Kokomo, Ind. 

Clay County Fish, Game & Bird Protective As.sociation. 

Keego Angling Club, Indianapolis. Indiana. 

Foots Lake Pleasure Club, Evansville, Indiana. 

Floyd County Fish & Game Protective A.ssociation, New Albany, Indiana. 

WHEREAS, The timber stands and timber resources of the state are 
being rapidly depleted ; 

WHEREAS, Reforesting, both natural and artificial of cut-over and 
denuded areas is alarmingly inadequate; 

WHEREAS, Private forestry is doing nothing to meet the situation due 
ft) increahed land values and profits from the grazing industry; 

WHEREAS, The removal of forests is resulting in greatly lowering the 
water level with resulted bad effect upon streams and water supplies, which 
in turn is working to decrease the fish life in oiu* waters ; 

WHEREAS, The disappearance of our forests is removing the natural 
habitat of wild game with a great decrease in wild life v^^hich must soon 
re.sult in its complete disappearance and cause a loss to sportsmen ; 

WHEREAS, Laws and measures for the control of timber and timber 
supplies are non-existant, and their absence must soon bring us to privation 
and want ; 

WHEREAS, The present conditions must .soon result in the paralysis 
and death of our great wood-using industries ; 

AVHEREAS, The timber and forestry resources and supplies constitute 
a stupendous and indispensable commodity and have no law or practice to 
regulate them ; 

RESOLVED, That laws be enacted whereby the state will acquire and 
plant and cause to be planted forestry acreage sufficient to insure a perm- 
anent timber supply. 



101 

RESOLVED, That lumbering be done on an economic basis, and, that 
the acreage be of sufficient proportions to supply all needs without impair- 
ment or reduction. 

RESOLVED, That the tax law should be so amended as to make it 
possible and profitable to maintain the necessary wood lot on farms. 

RESOLVED, That the public, commercial and technical interests should 
co-operate to the end that a permanent timber supply will be assured. 

RESOLVED, That a copy of these resolutions be sent to federal and 
state senators and representatives with the request that they use their best 
endeavors to secure the passage of laws as herein set forth to the lasting 
benefit and security of all. 

RESOLUTIONS TRI-STATE FORESTRY CONFERENCE. 

WHEREAS, The forests of the states of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana 
have been practically depleted and but little timber remains in the New 
England and the northeastern sections of the United States. The southern 
forests which have been the main source of supply for these three states 
will be exhausted within the next decade or two ; 

WHEREAS, There is a large portion of cut-over timber land on rugged 
topography and poor soil which is not adaptable to profitable agriculture 
and which should be growing forests for our future supply. A large part 
of that which is being farmed will soon be completely lost by erosion ; 

WHEREAS, The price of timber is rapidly increasing, consequent upon 
the decrease of the supply ; 

WHEREAS, The practice of forestry on essentially timber land is dis- 
couraged by the present system of taxation. The possibility of an annual 
cash income from the growing of tobacco and small fruits, and grazing, 
further discoux'age forests ; 

WHEREAS, in the large share of cases it is impractical and unprofit- 
able for private interests to use their land in the growth of timber, since 
the investment must run for a long term of years. The state can best meet 
a situation which requires the investment of lai-ge fimds for many years, 
through the purchase of public lands for reforestation ; 

WHEREAS, There are four thousand wood-using industries in Ohio," 
Illinois and Indiana whose main source of supply was native-grown timber 
which, if the present supply is not maintained, must perish, move to the 
source of supply, or bring in materials at a greatly increased cost ; 

EMPLOYES 

Illinois Indiana Ohio 

All Industries 620,000 265,000 600,000 

Wood-Using Industries 140,000 70,000 90,000 

CAPITAL 

All Industries $2,000,000,000 $675,000,000 $1,675,000,000 

Wood-Using Industries 400,000,000 175,000,000 160,000,000 



102 

PRODUCTS 

Illinois Indiana Ohio 

All Industries $2,250,000,000 $730,000,000 $1,785,000,000 

Wood-Using Industries 320,000,000 140,000,000 175,000,000 

WHEREAS, There is a large annual economic waste due to forest fires, 
since, in the three states concerned, there has been no system of forest 
fire protection developed ; 

WHEREAS, There is great need of an extensive and thorough cam- 
paign for the purpose of educating the public to the extremity of the forest 
situation and the necessity of action ; 

WHEREAS, The forestry situation and threatening condition of the 
wood-using industries requires immediate action to the end that a policy 
may be adopted and legislation enacted which will insure a permanent 
supply of timber ; 

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the Tri-State Forestry Confer- 
ence of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, convened at Indianapolis, on October 
22nd, and 23rd, 1919, the Governors of the respective states concurring 
therein, that the attention of the public and legislatures of the said states, 
be called to the necessity of legislative action which will lead to the 
assurance of a permanent timber supply. 

BE IT RESOLVED, That a system of taxation on timberlands be 
adopted which will discourage premature and wasteful cutting and encour- 
age forest renewal. 

BE IT RESOLVED, That the states should greatly increase their forest 
holdings by purchase of young-second-growth and land adapted to refor- 
estation, made possible by a bond issue of fifty to one hundred years' 
maturity, so the burden may be equally distributed through generations. 

Urging that large holdings by the states will present a steady and 
permanent source of supply which will stabilize timber prices. 

RESOLVED, That this conference urges upon our representatives in 
congress the necessity for largely increased appropriations under the pur- 
chase clause of the Weeks Act, to extend the area of national forests and 
particularly into the hardwood regions of West Virginia, Kentucky and 
Tennesse from which the three states concerned already draw a large por- 
tion of their hardwood supply. 

Be it further urged that the federal congress appropriate adequate funds 
for co-operation with the states in forestry, as it is doing in road building, 
agricultural extension, vocational education and other activities, with the 
especial object of encouraging farm forestry extension under the Smith- 
Lever Act, reforestation of idle lands and protection against fire. 

BE IT RESOLVED, That the states launch an extensive and thorough 
campaign through the press, the schools, the pulpit and mails, to arouse 
the public to the need of a State Forest Policy and necessity of action 
toward the assurance of a permanent timber supply. 

It is furthermore urged that forestry education should be made a pro- 
gressive part of the public school curriculum. 



103 

BE IT RESOLVED, That the work of the Tri-State Forestry Conference 
continue through State Forestry Educational Committees, these committees 
to be formed Independently in each of the three states under the direction 
of the state official having forestry in charge and to select from their 
number three persons, to serve on an executive committee governing the 
policies of the participating states. 

BE IT RESOLVED, That the conference expresses the appreciation 
of the work of the Governor of Indiana for calling the congress, the repre- 
sentatives of the Federal Forest Service, officers of other states who con- 
tributed their presence and papers, the War Department and the New 
York Conservation Commission for the loan of films and the press for their 
hearty support. 

BE IT RESOLVED, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to 
the President of the United States, the Chairman of the Agricultural Com- 
mittee, and House of Representatives, to our representatives in Congress, 
the Legislatures of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, the Governors of the said 
States, the Forester of the United States, and the President of the Amer- 
ican Forestry Association. 

ADJOURNMENT. 



